In ,
Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
(Don Klipstein) wrote:
Mostly par for the course since roughly 1963, with few exceptions and
the most shining ones were the surplus years of Clinton's second term
where non-unified government slowed spending bills and tax cut bills.
But the Clinton surpluses were largely due to accounting fraud
(admittedly a fraud in place since the mid-80s or so). If you take out
the SS "surplus" all but one year goes away and if you take out the
Medicare part of the surplus it all goes away.
Since the surplus HAS to be placed into NON_MARKETABLE treasury
securities that will have to be repaid, only in DC can you turn a
long-term liability into a short term asset.
The accounting rules were pretty much the same from sometime in the
Lyndon Johnson administration to now, and Clinton still managed 3
surpluses, and one SS-excluded surplus, and nobody else did that in the
past 30 years.
Probably yes - we would be now having a surplus if not for past
defecits, mostly by both Bushes and Reagan, after that Carter.
Or by the various Congresses. Reagan's budgets were "dead on
arrival" in the Dem controlled House, if you remember all the gleeful
press conferences of the time.
The Reagan budget requests had about as much spending as what Congress
approved. Congress spent a few billion less on Defense Dept, a few
billion more elsewhere than Reagan requested.
Keep in mind what happened in first half of Reagan's first term: He had
effective majoprity of Congress! Republicans ruled the Senate (and
Jeremiah Denton was a Democrat who was quite a rightwinger), while the
House had a conservative coalition of Republicans and some very
conservative Democrats from the South who had not yet switched parties!
Reagan even achieved tax cuts more than he was previously willing to
settle for, and spending level was close to that of his budget requests!
And the annual deficits did not take long to go from $80 billion to
$200 billion!
- Don Klipstein )