Well, let's see. That article makes two claims:
1) the US saw a surplus in June
2) Obama was the reason the US saw a surplus
Since I'm not someone who believes everything I read, I went to check on the article's claims. Here's what I found:
* US Debt May 31, 2013 = $16,738,821,943,986.12
* US Debt June 30, 2013 = $16,738,320,054,489.27
==> June Surplus = $501,889,496.85
VERY NICE. We did indeed see a very nice surplus. I am jumping for joy. Now, as to the claim that it was Obama? Well, I remember folks on this thread shouting and blaming the GOP for all the damage they were going to do to the economy if they let us fall off the "Fiscal Cliff". I also remember the Dems and Obama saying that what the GOP was doing by imposing this austerity from the "Fiscal Cliff" was irresponsible in their refusal to negotiate, because the "Fiscal Cliff" was going to do untold amounts of damage to the stock market and the economy. All the Keynesian Dems were frothing at the mouth with anger over the coming austerity because of it.
Hmm. I think what the GOP actually did in forcing us off the "Fiscal Cliff" and the austerity that came with it was bring us a surplus. So do we give credit to Obama and Dems? I think not. Did the stock market go down because of austerity? No, because the stock market is not correlated to GDP anymore now that Bernanke is QEing and ZIRPing with abandon.
However, I do love the fact that we had a month of surpluses. As you know, I don't believe in deficits and debt. So far this year, we've run a deficit of around $306B. That's pretty nice, especially when we annualize it. That means by going off the cliff, we will have cut our deficit in half. I hope we can sustain that downward trend. |
