The truth is that in the last Congress, President Clinton vetoed all of our bills that would have provided significant individual tax relief, and that was done so they could spend more money.
And in the three years since taxpayers started producing a surplus, that's exactly what's happened--in the absence of tax relief, we've seen a huge increase in spending. Before we had surpluses, and the few years prior, spending grew about 2 percent a year. In the couple of years since we've had surpluses, spending has grown over 6 percent a year.
Now, despite all that spending, we have, fortunately, managed to retire some debt, about $350 billion in debt reduction over the past two years. I think most of that is because it caught us by surprise. We woke up one morning and the money was sitting there--we couldn't spend it fast enough, and we didn't have an opportunity to pass a spending bill quickly enough. So, fortunately, we did manage to pay down some debt.
heritage.org
Massive debt? Not hardly.
So I guess you answered the question. You are not disappointed that Clinton squandered the opportunity that only he had to retire a significant portion of the federal debt. |
