They mean for that year. Not for all time.
The house forced it - remember the bill that forced a balanced
budget. Wonder why it is turned off for the democrats...

Martin

tsar wrote:

"Gunner Asch" wrote in message
...
On Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:41:15 -0700, "Calif Bill"
wrote:

Clinton left Bush a surplus


That is complete and utter bull****.

Want me to prove it?

http://www.factcheck.org/askfactchec...federal. html


February 3, 2008
Updated: February 11, 2008
Q: During the Clinton administration was the federal budget
balanced? Was the federal deficit erased?
A: Yes to both questions, whether you count Social Security or not.
This chart, based on historical figures from the nonpartisan
Congressional Budget Office, shows the total deficit or surplus for each
fiscal year from 1990 through 2006. Keep in mind that fiscal years begin
Oct. 1, so the first year that can be counted as a Clinton year is
fiscal 1994. The appropriations bills for fiscal years 1990 through 1993
were signed by Bill Clinton's predecessor, George H.W. Bush. Fiscal 2002
is the first for which President George W. Bush signed the
appropriations bills, and the first to show the effect of his tax cuts.




The Clinton years showed the effects of a large tax increase that
Clinton pushed through in his first year, and that Republicans
incorrectly claim is the "largest tax increase in history." It fell
almost exclusively on upper-income taxpayers. Clinton's fiscal 1994
budget also contained some spending restraints. An equally if not more
powerful influence was the booming economy and huge gains in the stock
markets, the so-called dot-com bubble, which brought in hundreds of
millions in unanticipated tax revenue from taxes on capital gains and
rising salaries.

Clinton's large budget surpluses also owe much to the Social
Security tax on payrolls. Social Security taxes now bring in more than
the cost of current benefits, and the "Social Security surplus" makes
the total deficit or surplus figures look better than they would if
Social Security wasn't counted. But even if we remove Social Security
from the equation, there was a surplus of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999
and $86.4 billion in fiscal 2000. So any way you count it, the federal
budget was balanced and the deficit was erased, if only for a while.

Update, Feb. 11: Some readers wrote to us saying we should have
made clear the difference between the federal deficit and the federal
debt. A deficit occurs when the government takes in less money than it
spends in a given year. The debt is the total amount the government owes
at any given time. So the debt goes up in any given year by the amount
of the deficit, or it decreases by the amount of any surplus. The debt
the government owes to the public decreased for a while under Clinton,
but the debt was by no means erased.

Other readers have noted a USA Today story stating that, under an
alternative type of accounting, the final four years of the Clinton
administration taken together would have shown a deficit. This is based
on an annual document called the "Financial Report of the U.S.
Government," which reports what the governments books would look like if
kept on an accrual basis like those of most corporations, rather than
the cash basis that the government has always used. The principal
difference is that under accrual accounting the government would book
immediately the costs of promises made to pay future benefits to
government workers and Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. But
even under accrual accounting, the annual reports showed surpluses of
$69.2 billion in fiscal 1998, $76.9 billion in fiscal 1999, and $46
billion for fiscal year 2000. So even if the government had been using
that form of accounting the deficit would have been erased for those
three years.

-Brooks Jackson

Sources
Congressional Budget Office, "Historical Budget Data," undated, accessed
28 Jan. 2008.