The Clinton Surplus Myth

I am getting tired of hearing these liberal talking heads on cable news channels talk about the Clinton surplus.

It upsets me even more that any conservative sharing the airwaves at that time fails to point out that there was no surplus following Bill Clinton's presidency.

I don't think that this is widely known, on either side of the aisle.

To disprove this false statement, you only have to go as far as the website for the U.S. Treasury, http://www.treasury.gov/. The national debt increased every year under Bill Clinton, and the lowest yearly deficit under Clinton in FY 2000 was still nearly $18 billion ($17.91 billion to be exact). The deficit was never anywhere near 0, so it never posted a positive number.

To illustrate my point, we'll look at the national debt, which consists of public debt and intragovernmental holdings. Public debt includes savings bonds, treasury bills or anything that the public can purchase from the government. Intragovernmental holdings refers to the government borrowing money from itself, much of it for Social Security.

But what Clinton did was reduce the public debt. He did this by borrowing from the intragovernmental holdings. Bill Clinton was like any other politician, using smoke and mirrors to cover up true intentions. He was not a "magical" president by any means, and the economic boom in the '90s was a result of the Internet and the effect that it had on business and sales.

This so-called surplus is used by the anti-Bush people to create the illusion that Bush came on the scene and screwed everything up. All of the numbers are on the U.S.Treasury's website. Don't take my word for it, go there and do the math for yourself.

This is a good example of why it is good to do research, and be educated on what is going on in the world. It is not acceptable anymore to take things at face value, or believe something just because someone said that it was true. If you do not
stand for "something," you will fall for anything.