Al, > Clinton did...
No he didn't. To achieve his "surplus," he included SS and Medicare tax revenues, just like it's been done for years.
moneycentral.msn.com
Politicians on both sides game the system
The accrual of interest also explains one of the great mysteries of government fiscal reporting -- how politicians of both ilks could crow over a "surplus" when total government debt continued to grow every year.
President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, bragged that his administration had produced a "surplus" in 1998, 1999 and 2000. It also left a "surplus" for incoming President George W. Bush in 2001. During that same period, total government debt rose by $291.7 billion.
Then President George W. Bush, a Republican, used the same fictional surplus to justify tax cuts.
In fact, this is a shell game that both parties play.
In the four years of purported surplus, 1998-2001, the total "On-Budget" surplus (regular budget programs) was a dinky $25.7 billion. Guess where the remainder of the surplus came from?
It came from the "Off-Budget," which is mostly Social Security. The surplus there was a whopping $533.4 billion. Most of that cash was used to reduce publicly held Treasury debt, the stuff that trades around the world, by $401.5 billion.
Unfortunately, gross debt -- which includes obligations in the Social Security trust fund and other government trust funds, as well as publicly held debt -- increased by $291.7 billion during the same period of reported "surplus."
Greenspan has his eye on real cash flow, not the fictions of government accounting. He knows that surplus cash from the payroll tax is about to disappear. When that happens, government borrowing on the open market will increase, and global attention will be on the cash shortfall for Social Security and Medicare.
That's why he's looking for trouble in 2008.
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