You seem to imply that Clinton didn’t benefit from Greenspan? Those low interest rates boosted tax reciepts and let him “balance” the budget. It wasn’t through Clinton’s intelligence or policy.[/quote]
So how come GWB took a surplus and created a huge deficit, with even lower interest rates?
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Not taking sides here, but there really was no “Clinton surplus.” The illusion of a surplus was created by borrowing from social security. This article gives a pretty good overview of the trickery involved. During his time in office, the national debt increased 26% from $4.5T to $5.7T. You can see this for yourself over in the data section at treasurydirect.gov.
It’s also worth mentioning that this had been going on long before Clinton became president, so he isn’t to blame for coming up with it. And his government was a model of sound fiscal policy compared to the two knuckleheads we’ve had since then, so please don’t take this as criticism. I just don’t like to hear these old myths repeated as if they are facts. Spending has been out of control since Ronnie Raygun rode into town off of one of his B-movie sets.
