In article ,
Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,
(Don Klipstein) wrote:


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.

Gee and in all this time (thru GOP and Dem presidents alike) I thought
it was the Congress that appropriated money. If you look at the proposed
budgets vs the actual expenditures in those years, you will find that
the latter bore little resemblance to the former and was higher than the
budget requests. Not at all an unusual occurrance through the years.

My experience has been that appropriations mostly resembled budget
requests, mostly just a little bigger. Exception: a little less for
Defense when the White House was held by a Republican and the House was
controlled by Democrats.

Next notable exception in my memory was that for one fiscal year in the
first term of the current president, he requested $8 billion
appropriations for energy, and got a $14 billion "Energy Bill". He signed
it. I do suspect the highway bill that has spending for 5 years gets to
be more like $20 billion bigger than requested.

- Don Klipstein )