NO president has balanced a budget since Dwight Eisenhower did it over a half-century ago.
According to the Bureau of the Public Debt, the last year the national debt went down was 1957.
Clinton got within about $20 billion of breaking-even once, but the national debt increased every single year of his presidency.
I suppose that’s because money collected for Social Security was counted as income, even though it was invested in US bonds. They add to the debt, but aren’t counted in the budget as a deficit. Cute trick.
Just wait until the 70 trillion in unfunded entitelments begin to come due in the next decade. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
True. But rhetorically speaking - when we learned this year that money can be counted in “trillions” - Clinton’s “within about $20 billion of breaking-even” sounds good enough. Of course, without Gingrich republicans on his case, Clinton would not done it. But the larger point remains: the republican congress during the Bush administration forgot what fiscal responsibility means.
I can add another related point. Republican *party* is not a single idea party like many parliamentary parties of Europe, Israel, etc, but more a *coalition*. There is a very substantial number of socially moderate people and lots of businessmen who voted R for the reason of fiscal responsibility. They are not ideological and can be persuaded to swing. I know quite a good number of those personally. When Republicans stopped being fiscally responsible, these people voted Obama on the “feel good” reason alone. Shallow and not forward thinking? Yes. But it’s the fact.