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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (107378)	7/9/2011 6:53:16 PM
From: TimF	3 Recommendations Respond to of 224756

Not entirely true. The first two years had a Democratic congress which had the courage to enact a tax increase without a single Republican vote. Irrelevant since we where talking about spending restraint. That tax increase was largely responsible for the budget surpluses during the Clinton years. Mostly false. Without it you might not have had a brief small surplus (and even then if you look at the "unified budget" ), so in that sense it could be called "largely responsible", but other factors where larger. The solid economic growth combined with the bubble top before the recession (which started after Clinton left office) was bigger, as was the restraint on spending. If you look at a surplus of size $X, then anything that brought in $X or reduced spending by $X, can be said to account for 100 percent of the surplus, but if you measure that way and add up the factors you can get several hundred or even several thousand percent of the deficit accounted for. Such a measurement is silly. When considering what was "largely responsible" I would say the biggest factor or factors. The tax increase wasn't at the top of the list. Which is IMO in budget balance terms the correct way to look at it, since there is one federal government, and its budget balance concerns all of it and not just some parts. But it is true that the federal government accumulated future obligations of some sort even as the budget was in surplus.

To: Kenneth E. Phillipps who wrote (107378)	7/9/2011 7:17:14 PM
From: lorne	4 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 224756

kenny...Are you interested in the truth about clinton's phony surplus?."That tax increase was largely responsible for the budget surpluses during the Clinton years.".... The Myth of the Clinton Surplus January 18, 1998 The government can have a surplus even if it has trillions in debt, but it cannot have a surplus if that debt increased every year. This article is about surplus/deficit, not the debt. However, it analyzes the debt to prove there wasn't a surplus under Clinton. For those that want a more detailed explanation of why a claimed $236 billion surplus resulted in the national debt increasing by $18 billion, please read this follow-up article. Full article..... craigsteiner.us