Replies

Every single Budget has included the surpluses from Social Security, highway, and unemployment compensation.

No government budget has every used the same accrual techniques as a business. So comparing apples to apples Clinton did balance the budget and reduce the deficit.

“Other readers have noted a USA Today story stating that, under an alternative type of accounting, the final four years of the Clinton administration taken together would have shown a deficit. This is based on an annual document called the “Financial Report of the U.S. Government,” which reports what the governments books would look like if kept on an accrual basis like those of most corporations, rather than the cash basis that the government has always used. The principal difference is that under accrual accounting the government would book immediately the costs of promises made to pay future benefits to government workers and Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. But even under accrual accounting, the annual reports showed surpluses of $69.2 billion in fiscal 1998, $76.9 billion in fiscal 1999, and $46 billion for fiscal year 2000. So even if the government had been using that form of accounting the deficit would have been erased for those three years.”
Fact-check.org

Again, if a private entity did the accounting tricks that the Federal government engaged in during 1998-2001, they would be sent to jail.

Also, the debt went up, how do you or FactCheck.org explain that? Hint, your C/P doesn't explain crap, just bad spin.

Keep on being gaslighted by FactCheck.org and don't believe the numbers.

The money the government owes itself is still debt my friend despite what FactCheck.org regurgitates, lol.

Tried to give you the simple route of the TREASURY NUMBERS but unfortunately the brainwashing requires more deprograming from mass media outlets

The US federal gov’t fiscal year begins on October 1st and ends on September 30th. In the fiscal year ending September 30, 2000, the US federal govt had a surplus of $237 billion. In addition, the total US national debt was $ 5.655 trillion on September 30, 1999 and $ 5.673 trillion on September 30, 2000, so that was an annual increase of $18 trillion [SOURCE: Treasury Department’s ‘Monthly Treasury Statement of Receipts and Outlays of the United States Government’]. The total US national debt is the sum of the debt held by the public (“on-budget”) and the debt held by the gov’t (“off-budget”). The debt held by the public (owed to others) was $ 3.232 trillion on September 30, 1999 and it was $ 2.992 on September 30, 2000, so that was an “on-budget” decrease of $240 billion (The Clinton surplus). The debt held by the gov’t (‘owed’ to itself) was $ 2.423 on September 30, 1999 and $ 2.681 on September 30, 2000, so that was an “off-budget” increase of $258 billion, meaning a net $18 billion increase of both together, or, an $18 billion increase in the total US national debt. [SOURCE: google search ‘monthly statement of the public debt of the United States September 30, 2000’ and in the TreasuryDirect website click 1999, click September, click Summary Adobe Acrobat, repeat for 2000]

The ‘Clinton surplus myth’ movement points out this net $18 billion increase in total debt, and of that total $258 billion increase in govt-held debt, they specifically finger a $246 billion entry figure found in the same Monthly Treasury Statement [To find it, scroll to ‘Table 6. Schedule D’, ‘Net Purchases’, ‘Fiscal Year to Date’, ‘This Year’, ‘Grand total’]. This $246 billion is that year’s increase of intra-govt debt of off-budget items, mainly Social Security. What that means is the US Treasury took that year’s “off-budget” Social Security surplus, gave the Social Security trust fund an IOU in exchange for that cash money, and spent that cash money for other “on-budget” expenditures. The myth movement says that the federal gov’t surplus of $237 billion in 2000 would not have been possible without ‘borrowing’ the Social Security surplus. Only by ‘borrowing’ that fiscal year’s $246 billion off-budget surplus and by Treasury ‘trickery’ could that be called a fiscal year ‘surplus’. According to them, if there was an actual surplus, the national debt in 2000 would have come down, instead of going up $18 billion.

There is a difference when the federal gov’t has borrowed from itself (isn’t a liability), and when the federal gov’t has borrowed from others (is a liability), or more specifically, there’s a difference between “on-budget” and “off-budget” federal gov’t debt. What confuses everybody is that these two different types of debt are added together and called the national debt which makes them seem like the same types of debt. How are these debts different? During current “on-budget” operations, if the federal govt receives less money from individual federal tax withholding, corporate federal tax, etc., than it pays out while provisioning itself, running the country, etc., that “on-budget” deficit spending is financed with newly-created money. That newly-created money was approved by Congress and also was accounted for to the penny by selling additional “marketable” securities, or Treasury bonds, to the public. These additional Treasury bonds increase the federal gov’t debt “held by the public”. Furthermore, when the federal gov’t receives more money from “off-budget” operations, like Social Security payments deducted from paychecks, above what it pays out to those “off-budget” operations, like Social Security recipients, by law it must use that surplus to buy “non-marketable” Government Account Series securities, or what I personally like to call ‘pending’ Treasury bonds. These ‘pending’ Treasury bonds increase the federal gov’t debt “held by the govt”. These ‘pending’ Treasury bonds are placed in the corresponding trust fund for future redemption, and that surplus off-budget cash money is promptly spent on current on-budget expenditures. The sum of both those Treasury bonds issued and sold by the Treasury to finance on-budget deficit spending (debt held by the public), plus all those ‘pending’ Treasury bonds posted in off-budget trust funds (debt held by the gov’t) is the total public debt, or the national debt. The key difference is, only the marketable Treasury bonds issued that coincided with the newly created money to finance on-budget deficit spending are liabilities (because they already monetized an on-budget deficit). The non-marketable securities, or ‘pending’ Treasury bonds that are sitting in trust funds like the Social Security trust fund are not liabilities until they are redeemed by the trust fund (because they have not yet monetized an off-budget deficit)…

In other words, Treasury bonds held by the public and ‘pending’ Treasury bonds held within the federal government are both considered a debt, but both are not a liability. Only debt held by the public that financed on-budget deficit spending is reported just as a liability on the consolidated financial statements, the balance sheet of the United States government. Debt held by government accounts, or the intra-gov’t-held debt, is not (yet) reported just as a liability on the consolidated balance sheet of the United States government (not until it is redeemed by the trust fund). Using basic rules of accounting, not trickery, debt held by government accounts, or the intra-gov’t-held debt, is at the moment both an asset (to those trust funds) and a liability (to the Treasury), so they presently offset each other on the consolidated balance sheet, and why that fiscal year 2000 off-budget debt is separate from that fiscal year 2000 on-budget surplus.

So how does ‘pending’ off-budget debt (which isn’t counted in the 2000 surplus) become actual on-budget debt (that is counted in the 2000 surplus)? When any off-budget trust fund has a deficit in any given year, that trust fund needs to ‘finance’ that deficit. To finance that deficit, the trust fund will hand over some of their ‘pending’ Treasury bonds to the Treasury, and the Treasury will hand over newly created dollars. Newly created dollars means deficit spending, so just as in any on-budget federal gov’t deficit spending, those newly created dollars will be accounted for to the penny with a coinciding issuance of Treasury bonds. Those previously ‘pending’ Treasury bonds will become actual Treasury bonds. That previously ‘pending’ debt held by intra-gov’t will become actual debt held by the public. That previously ‘pending’ off-budget liability (caused by trust fund surplus savings) will become an actual on-budget liability (caused by trust fund deficit spending). Whether that given fiscal year has a total annual surplus or deficit will depend on actual liabilities (which depend on that year’s actual economic performance), not ‘pending’ liabilities (which depend on a future year’s hypothetical economic performance). To see the total debt, you look at the balance sheet, which is the entire, all-time, financial picture of the US federal gov’t from the very beginning. This total debt is the cumulative total of all the years up to the year 2000, made up of both the actual liabilities, or on-budget debt held by the public (money borrowed from others), and the ‘pending’ liabilities, the ‘pending’ off-budget debt held by gov’t (money ‘borrowed’ from itself). Conversely, to see the actual cash flow, you look at the income statement, which is the actual cash money flowing in and the actual cash money flowing out, or just the current, on-budget, actual cash flow that occurred in the year 2000. The bottom line of that US federal gov’t income statement shows that in that year 2000, the amount of actual cash money the federal gov’t took in was large enough to result in an on-budget fiscal year surplus. An increase in the total debt (+$18 billion) which includes a future-day ‘pending’ debt that is posted on the consolidated balance sheet doesn’t change the yearly income statement’s present-day bottom line cash surplus (+$237 billion). A cumulative balance sheet and a current cash flow statement are separate measures, of separate values, in separate time frames, and using separate rules of accounting. Comparing them together is like comparing apples to oranges.

The Clinton-surplus-myth mentality is yet another variation of the same theme, which is a gold-standard mentality that trips up many people when talking about the federal government. This outdated thinking from a bygone era contributes to a ‘federal-government-is-the-same-as-a-household’ groupthink (patterned behavioral and self-reinforcing group dynamic) that is widely pervasive today. Since leaving the gold standard for good in 1971, the federal gov’t is no longer like a household. In the post-gold standard, modern monetary system, when the federal gov’t, the issuer of dollars, ‘borrows’ dollars, it is not the same as when a household borrows dollars. As the saying goes, you can have your own opinions, but not your own facts. According to the Treasury Monthly Statement, in fiscal year 2000, the United States government had receipts of $ 2.025 trillion and outlays of $ 1.788 trillion and “the final budget results and details a surplus of $237 billion.” As per the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the US federal budget was in surplus and the Public Debt, or “debt held by the public” (money borrowed from others) was decreased during Clinton’s second term. Rather than grasping this hard reality and instead preferring to deny the accounting science, the Clinton-surplus-is-a-myth movement wants to engage you in a childish ‘What came first, the chicken or the egg’ argument. It bothers them that Clinton took a Social Security surplus and shamelessly used it to get his budget in surplus.

I have a compromise to offer to The-Clinton-surplus-is-a-myth folks: I’ll admit to them that Social Security being in surplus gets all the credit for putting Clinton’s budget in surplus if they’ll admit that the U.S. economy under the leadership of President Clinton was so strong that it put Social Security in surplus. If anyone says or posts otherwise, well, they won’t get a ‘like’ on their Facebook page from me.

"You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality ." – Ayn Rand

http://thenationaldebit.com/wordpress/2016/01/06/clinton-surplus-myth-myth/

Part II

Simple rebuttal made above by my c/p by spewed by an idiotic source above that FactCheck.org uses is that combined with intragovernmental holdings, there was no surplus at all despite the meanderings of the Clinton Surplus myth, myth that uses so many words to explain so many lies.