"Dave Hinz" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:21:55 -0500, Ed Huntress
wrote:
"Dave Hinz" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 13:39:15 -0500, Ed Huntress

wrote:
"Dave Hinz" wrote in message
...
On 16 Feb 2005 09:07:14 -0800, jim rozen
wrote:

Sure, Clinton did. Didn't he have a huge deficit when he was in
office? Oh, ooops. My error. I was mistaking 'balanced budget'
for 'huge deficit.' How silly of me.

Clinton never had a balanced budget. He played enron-type numbers
games, but the deficit kept getting bigger each of his 8 years.
Doesn't sound like a balanced budget, or the "surplus" he claims
to have had to me.

I'd like to see your numbers on that if you don't mind, Dave.

Didn't we _just_ do this like a month ago?
Anyone got that GAO link, or do I have to google for Ed?

Well, if we did, I don't remember it, or I didn't see it. I'm only here
about half the time.
Do you remember the thread name or a keyword? Maybe I can find it on
your
name and "Clinton"?

Well, this isn't the link that I remember from last time, but it's
a good clear one from a solid source:

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdhisto4.htm

To me, that looks like the debt is going up every year, including
during the Clinton years. If that's a surplus, it's a definitino of
"surplus" that I have not previously encountered.

When Gunner posts such stats I generally ignore them, because he gets them
from right-wing blogs and websites and they're usually b.s. In this case, I
wonder what led you to this figure. Anyone sophisticated enough to go
looking for the numbers probably is sophisticated enough to know what's
wrong with the ones you refer to.

In fact, the national debt went down both in actual dollar terms (adjusted
for inflation) and as a percent of the GDP during Clinton's second term. For
almost all sensible purposes, the national debt as a percentage of GDP is
the meaningful number.

But you don't even have to use that to show that the debt went down. Again,
not knowing what your background in this is I'm not sure what to use as
illustration. You could look at the debt figures published by the White
House from their own OMB figures:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget...5/pdf/hist.pdf

In Table 7.1 you'll find the columns that reflect the gross federal debt and
one that shows "Held By Federal Government Accounts." You subtract the
latter from the former.

The reason you do that is that the "Held By" is that "debt" is acquired any
time the federal government issues a Treasury security -- including the ones
that the government issues to itself. In all honest discussions of the
national debt, except those made by economists who are looking at the
several different definitions of national debt for various reasons, the
figures used are those of the "debt held by the public."

Here are the definitions from the U.S. Treasury Dept.:

===========================

http://www.ustreas.gov/education/faq...onal-debt.html

FAQs: National Debt
THE NATIONAL DEBT

What is the National Debt?

The term national debt refers to direct liabilities of the United States
Government. There are several different concepts of debt that are at various
times used to refer to the national debt:

*
Public debt is defined as public debt securities issued by the U.S.
Treasury. U. S. Treasury securities primarily consist of marketable Treasury
securities (i.e., bills, notes and bonds), savings bonds and special
securities issued to state and local governments (State and Local Government
Series securities, or SLGS). A portion is debt held by the public and a
portion is debt held by government accounts.
*

Debt held by the public excludes the portion of the debt that is held
by government accounts.
*

Gross federal debt is made up of public debt securities and a small
amount of securities issued by government agencies.

Debt held by the public is the most meaningful of these concepts and
measures the cumulative amount outstanding that the government has borrowed
to finance deficits.

snip

Additional statistics on the public debt may be found in the Budget of the
United States and the Economic Report of the President, and on the
Congressional Budget Office website. Daily, monthly, and quarterly updates
on the public debt may be found on the Financial Management Service (FMS)
website.

===============================

Using the definitions from Treasury, look at the figures from the same
website you pointed to:

http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpdodt.htm#years

See what's going on? The intergovernmental holdings (that's money we owe to
ourselves g) went 'way up, but the debt held by the public went down.

So, why are you looking at the gross debt, including interdepartmental
issuances of Treasury securities? Most people wouldn't even go looking for
that. Did you follow some blog or website there, or did you find it with
Google?

I'm reasonably sure where Gunner got it. Suffice to say, it's not a real
figure. It's one that someone would use if he wanted to tell us that black
is really white. That's Gunner's hobby. g

--
Ed Huntress