PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH Message Board

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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH

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To: Sully- who wrote (398990)	4/25/2003 1:14:39 PM
From: jackhach	Read Replies (2) of 769670

Your openly mixing apples with oranges -- the national debt and the budget are TWO very, very different things -- and Mr. Fitzgerald's account (which I had previously read) is bogus and patently misleading in its premise and calculations/assumptions. He mixed facts with fiction -- the best way to convey an agenda. He, in fact, had to retort his whole contention -- when pressed by the Office of Budget and Management who looked into his alleged math. I'll pull the subsequent press release of same if you give me a few minutes. short answer: The national debt was in compound interest mode -- and still is. The borrowing from Visa to pay Mastercard "explanation" is an erroneous oversimplification. The "lock box" thing is genuinely confusing and would take a very long time to convey -- and I admit that both sides of the aisle have played on people's false sense of what "lock box" actually means. The treasury (at present) does not count/include the "interest" or "IOUs" to the Social Security principal as dipping into the "locked box". This wasn't always the case -- and Bush Sr -- as part of the NOV 5, 1990 tax package (a day after the mid-term elections) is the man who sponsored the legislation to allow for these exceptions. It was introduced by Reagan earlier (1987) -- but was shot down by Congress. So Clinton was using the very same method (without additional % of borrwing) as BUSH & REAGAN had previously [thus apples to apples]. The difference was made up in tax receipts from a booming economy -- much of which came from capital gains taxes on sales of securities. Also, low inflation kept SS payments and Fed pensions (COLA) costs in line. In final -- Clinton also benefited by the fact that the USA was now borrowing new funds to replace the old higher interest-bearing 30+ year notes etc... This last benefit however takes a very long time (given the size of overall debt) to show a REDUCED NET debt. -JH

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