The Myth Of The Clinton Surplus

What the Clintons purported as surplus's was the projections 10 yrs out. Projects made due to the republican congress cutting taxes, thereby RAISING fed tax revenue, an economic fact that liberalism refuses to acknowledge, just like most FACTS.

We all know that the Dems could never keep their hands off our money for
10 yrs.

Jeff,

Dems created Social Security and they did more to kill it than anyone I know of. It was about 1950 that the Democrat Congress found SS to be a ready fund for them to make all their promises to help our "friends" with foreign aid from. They were not in control of the first two years of Eisenhower but were the next 6 years and instead of raising income taxes they just went ahead spending SS money. The saddest part of this is that they controlled one house or the other the next 40 years but that says that the Republicans could have brought up something about this crime, but they never did try very hard.

It is not too late for the Congress to take their hands out of the fund so it can heal a bit but it won't happen since they know they need that fund to fund the "business" of the US.

The saddest part of all this is that Congress men know that they can keep up this game and still get re-elected. The people are actually as stupid as Congress thinks they are or they would have rebelled about this long ago. As I said in September on this blog, I get no COLA for the first time in the 15 years I have been on SS but my Medicare payment has risen. I don't think the cruds in Congress thought we would notice, for some reason. Our Glorious Leader has suggested each retiree get a $250 tax credit but what will that do for most of them? Most pay no income tax anyway so that credit is a pile of Pelosi for them. I pay on 85% of my SS payments because my wife is still employed and we, foolishly, still pay jointly. I guess divorce would have been the answer for us long ago.

We can't beat the politicians but we don't have to sit back and let them continue to screw us, either.

Thank you for explaining this to me (to all your readers). I have been buying into the school of thought that the government was somehow fiscally responsible for 8 years and then Bush came along and blew it. Looks like, instead, everyone we've been electing is to blame.

Good point, too, Roy, about tax credits for SS recipients. I'm sure that my dad is really going to appreciate getting a $250 tax credit for his nonexistent income. That'll be so helpful. 8-|

I suppose the millions of jobs created were a "myth" also?

You provide a good exemplar of what too little knowledge and too much time will yields. I suggest you take a class in fund accounting. The Google can't be your only source of coming up with posts.

Deep the jobs were created and wiped out at the same time. Most were website based jobs with no future or benefits. The 90's were a website and beanie baby based economy. Those jobs evaporated like water on a black car on a 90 degree day. In actuality Clinton signed the start of the deathnell of the American Industrial Revolution. He also made China a favored trading nation.hhhhhmmmmmm that's working well for us. He also signed the legislation that eventually crashed our economy.

Clinton got the housing crisis started, and his buddies finished the job as leaders of Fanny and Freddy, and what did the housing bubble bursting do to the rest of the economy?

Clinton also changed the debt from long term to short term, cutting the interest rate, and declaring victory, did not cut the real dollars, and made the government have to pay the bonds off sooner, but on paper (paper) it looked good, which is all clinton was, a paper tiger.

The president does not create 1 job, the economy does, and the Republican tax cuts starting in 1980, with Reagan, gave the economy the $$$$ to grow. The economy was still floundering from the slight recession of the Bush years (you know "the worst economy in the last 50 yr lie" until the 1996 Republican congress and their tax cuts again giving the economy $$$$ to grow with. Taxes cut $$$$ from the economy and it does not have the food to grow. Look it up, it is in all the truthful history books.

You guys are missing the whole point. When liberals are courteous enough to provide us with all the "facts", our reluctance to embrace can only be attributed to ignorance. I suppose there are also some who do not believe our "planet has a fever"……..or that government-run health care is our "best" interest. LOL

I pray they do away with the cash cow of social security. Like unionization, it is an unsustainable top-heavy scheme which negatively impacts our economy. Less and less contribute, many many more draw on the funds, and the government has it's own piggy-bank on life-support. Robbin' Peter and paying twice as much to Paul doesn't make much sense. Then again, debt may be viewed as a surplus…………in the eyes of those fiscally irresponsible.

Tory,
I'm still waiting for the first example of a fiscally responsible federal government in my lifetime. Haven't found one yet.

And now we are on the verge of the government running health care, when it already can't manage what it does run. Pretty scary, if you ask me.

Alex,
The problem with eliminating Social Security is in how to do it. There's a $2.5 trillion hole that would have to be filled, due to all the governmental theft that wiped out the Trust Fund. It would be great to replace SS with a retirement program that actually earned interest and increased the wealth of the people, but obviously, that cannot be a government program, because the government is filled with con men.

Clinton still had fewer deficits, and more and larger surpluses, than any President in history.

Bush and Reagan still hold the records for debt . These are still facts any way you look at it .

I agree, Andrea. I read King's post….walked away shaking my head. What's the real purpose here? During Clinton's presidency, the annual budget deficits came down. It's simply a fact. That said….I'm not attributing these reduced deficits to Clinton, necessarily.

So, what's the point? It's to shine a conservative light on some dusty 10 year old set of facts to try to disparage Democrats. Okay….cool…..just say that, then.

This is 2009…..and the huge increases in debt are 80-20 Bush's responsibility. I don't make the rules. If the debt happens on your watch….you own it, whether you were fully responsible for it or not. Contrast Clinton's yearly deficits with Bush's. Contrast Clinton's increase in the national debt, to Bush's. We're talking light years apart.

And that's what should be the point.

King did say why he was posting this. It was to challenge the tiring and still occurring falsity being told that the country operated under a budget surplus during the Clinton administration. It simply didn't happen; nowhere does King try to state that Bush did anything better (he even says Clinton's deficit was much better than Bush's or Obamas), so once again, you're just getting all upset because your side is being called out and that a long standing myth about the Clinton years has been quashed. I saw no talk in this blog post supporting or defending the massive increase in the deficit under Bush (or Obama). If it's OK for Dems to bring it up for their own good, why is it bad to bring it up to refute it?

To: Rev c/o DA King. I agree (possibly for different reasons) that we shouldn't be there. I'd nuke all the major sites from offshore and agent orange the opium fields. Before we were fighting wars for big oil; now we're fighting them for NOW. [Sorry DA, I really wanted to tell the Rev I agreed with him about something and couldn't get into his site. Irrelevancy is a terribl;e thing.]

I guess nobody noticed that I said that Eisenhower had a Republican majority Congress his first two years and then he got some things done with a Democrat controlled Congress his last 6 years. Turn the parties and numbers around and you find Clinton, 2 years of his own party and then 6 of the opposition. Now you just can't blame a President completely when the opposition has control but, by the same token, you can't hand all that credit to a President when his opposition is largely responsible for it. Sure Clinton moved toward a centrist position and it appeared that he was more responsible for all that Congress did his last 6 years, but only partisan people from either side want him to have credit for what Newt attained in that period.

How far center did Clinton go? He would make Obama look very Communist by comparison. He made Bush look like way left after his, Clinton's, first two years.

Newt the posterboy of family values!

Rev: This is 2009…..and the huge increases in debt are 80-20 Bush's responsibility. I don't make the rules. If the debt happens on your watch….you own it, whether you were fully responsible for it or not.

I think I follow you now, Rev. If you happen to overdraw your bank account by a few hundred dollars………..then I "borrow" your checkbook and write bogus checks for several thousands……….you are the only one responsible for incurring the total debt? This is too cool.

Maybe this is the design of Obamacare laying low until 2013, should it manage to squeek through the cracks. Who would want to be president when that mess fully kicks in, and assume responsiblity for the nightmares to follow?

The purpose of this post was to point out the facts. That's all. I did that.

I was speaking politically, Alex.

More Americans being able to see a doctor is described as "nightmares to follow." I found that interesting.

Mass Distraction:

There is not 1 american who is unable to see the doctor. That is the great liberal lie about health care, Hospitals and Doctors do not turn patients away, there are clinics and many free programs.

Do these programs burden those able to pay, sure, but they are not the root cause of the health care cost crisis, which is what politicians are paying lip service too, while doing nothing to fix.

My wife looked into an Aetna program, with the same co-pays for DR and Scripts we have now, and it was 170 per month, X 8,000,000 who want health insurance and cant afford it, is 17 billion per year, but the bill in congress is more than 10 times that costs, why, why waste so much money? The only answer is this is another cog in the machine to nationalize health care, and collapse the capitalistic system. THAT IS THE NIGHTMARE TO FOLLOW.

We're halfway there already, jeff. Health care nationalization would take us 2/3rd' s of the way to a socialist country.

Somehow, the United States Postal Services functions (AHHHH!!!! SOCIALISM!!!!). Somehow, the public education system – barely, because idiots in charge keep cutting the funding to bailout massive corporations – functions (AHHH!!!! SOCIALISM!!!!). And somehow, $45 MILLION AMERICANS REMAIN UNINSURED BECAUSE BLOATED AND GREEDY HEALTH INSURANCE COMPANIES THAT FUND BOTH DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEN ALIKE CONTINUOUSLY TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THEIR CUSTOMERS, BUT IT'S OK BECAUSE IT'S ALL IN THE GOOD, VIRTUOUS OF CAPITALISM.

If there were no public school system and $45 million children did not have access to school because they couldn't afford private school tuition, would we be concerned then? If there were no publicly-funded military but rather several private competitors and $45 million people were left unprotected because they couldn't afford the fees necessary to ensure protection, would we be concerned then? If $45 million Americans were out of work because the government simply refused to regulate Wall Street and as a result the bankers and Satanic businessmen gobbled up small business and shipped all the American jobs overseas, would we be concerned then?

Because that's essentially what we're doing by refusing to provide federally funded health care. We're leaving $45 million people susceptible to any sort of curable or incurable illnesses. Sure they have free clinics and whatnot, but have you ever actually been to one?? This fall, my pediatrician was booked and I was worried my daughter had swine flu, so I took her to a free clinic. We spent 3 hours there without receiving so much as greeting from the completely overwhelmed staff, and I eventually just took her to the ER because she was getting worse and worse and exposing the people around her (she turned out to only have a severe case of the seasonal flu, thankfully). Now, can you imagine if I were not employed or didn't make enough money to finance a trip to the exponentially more expensive Emergency Room? Exactly what would I have done, with no sort of governmental assistance? I would have to care for my daughter myself, with my extremely limited knowledge of medicine. How is that the RIGHT thing to support?

Publicly financed health care has worked; look no further than MediCaid and Medicare. But when the economy is in the crapper, apparently people's health is less important than getting Wall Street back on track; the same Wall Street that screwed us in the first place by knowingly financing everything and paying for it with nonexistant money.

Frankly, I think all politicians are corrupt and have no interest in the good of the public. But at least Obama is proposing something that WOULD benefit the public in its entirety, whether he is sincere in his intentions or not. If you care about other human's lives, then you should support the health care bill. If you'd prefer to sit idly by and watch as $45 million American citizens remain uninsured and therefore susceptible to any sort of mild or severe illness, then go ahead. I'll see you in hell.

The Postal Service is losing tons of money. The public school system is lousy, and we spend more on public education than any other country in the world. Not good examples of government efficiency.

Who said anything about not letting children have access to school, or not having a military ? Straw man arguments.

And everybody has access to health care. Everybody. In your daughter's case, they would have treated her at the ER whether you had insurance or not. I'm assuming you couldn't take her to a doctor for some reason, which is far cheaper.

I agree that health care needs reformed, but what the Dems are proposing pretty much sucks. It makes health care MORE expensive, not less, thus, it doesn't address the actual problem. We already spend more than any country in the world for health care.
Plus, if forcing people to buy health insurance is the solution, then that's like blaming the people themselves for not having health insurance in the first place, right ?

And if you think those waits for health care are going to get any shorter after 31 million people are added to the insurance rolls, you're going to be in for a big surprise.