Bush vs. ClintonFollow

Smash. I'm not disagreeing with you that we need to work on reducing the national debt. Not one bit.

I am saying that Clinton's surplus did not do that, and was not designed to do that, and did not ultimately end up doing that. It was an "oops". Nothing more.


I do see where you are coming from with Bush not allocating that money into his first year budget to pay off the some of the debt. He coulc have done that. However, I don't think you can point the finger at Bush alone. Clinton ran a smaller surplus in 1999, but still managed to increase the debt in the next year (the same year he ran an even larger surplus). He didn't curb spending and reduce the debt during those years either.


Since the name of the thread is "Bush vs Clinton", I think we're supposed to be comparing/contrasting the two presidents. It's a bit off topic to blame Bush for doing the exact same thing Clinton did (take a surplus in one year and still increase the debt the next). Clinton also had the luxury of a booming economy, which Bush did not. It's a bit unreasonably to demand that Bush should be reducing the debt when he's got much less revenue coming in, is struggling with a recessed economy, and is dealing with the result of 9/11 (even ignoring Iraq since that's another topic), when Clinton had a boom economy, no major wars or national disasters to deal with, and still managed to grow the debt...


That's the only point I'm making here. I'm not making excuses about the debt. I agree that ideally we should be paying it off. I'm just not willing to point the finger at only one president for failing to do that when the thread is about comparing two presidents and neither of them met that expectation.

Here's my favortie numbers game. The debt grew by 3^12 while Regean was in office. The sell behind his economic theory was that it would generate so much revenue that we could pay the debt back and still be ahead, all with lower taxes.

We all know that didn't happen. The '04 budget was 2.158^12.

If Regean's policies had been debt neutral we could have paid zero taxes this year as a nation and still be ahead.

Let me see, I say that there hasn't been a real surplus in years. People say I'm wrong. I post a link that suggests I'm right. Then you basically reiterate what I wrote, then call me a rube.

I guess that makes you a rube, too, as well as a poor reader.

1. Yes, the debt raises every year due to interest. But don't you think an honest surplus should account for the costs of servicing the debt? Debt due to interest is still debt. And if we have to borrow to cover interest, then we really don't have a surplus.

2. Yes, Bush is the presidential equivalent of a credit card junkie. But I don't know why you bring this up in response to my post. I was not discussing Bush's budget policy.

3. No, a portion of the budget has to ALWAYS go towards servicing the debt, think of it like the minimum payment on a credit card.

Try over a quarter of the budget.

Bam!

And Totem is down for the count!