When did the SURPLUS become the DEFICIT??

[skypilot]

Was it before or after Sept.11? I just realized that I don't know this. I know that this administration burned through the deficit in a shockingly fast time but I don't know just when the surplus was officially gone.

[Blue Wally]

1. The "surplus"

Ended when the dot com boom went bust. Federal and state tax receipts in the late 90s were artifically inflated by the capital gains receipts of taxpayers. Once the NASDAQ collapsed, these capital gains disappeared as did the surplus. Enron and 9/11 further decreased income and tax receipts. Instead of treating the nineties boom in tax receipts as a "one-time" phenomenom, the federal government and the states factiored it into their budget forecasts. Idiots!

[sampsonblk]

2. Where can I read more about that?

I hadn't heard that before. Where can I read more?

[bryant69]

4. Yeah but I think you also have to consider

That President Bush's extremely imprudent budgetary policy of giving the wealthy enormous tax cuts while doing nothing to slow spending and embarking on a policy of military adventurism abroad probably didn't help matters any.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[sampsonblk]

3. Summer of 2001

The CBO forecast in July/August of the year that we were headed for a deficit. Bush admin went ballistic, claiming the CBO was being political and was using bad assumptions.

A few weeks later, OMB fessed up that there would be a small deficit - expressed as a % of the GDP. That began the "pct of GDP" nonsense we are still listening to today..

[madrchsod]

5. the day bush was sworn in

that is when what ever projected surpluses were eliminated..

[seabeyond]

6. about the time of the second tax cut and war

emptying out the treasury

[oscar111]

8. graph of surplus etc is at

ON EDIT: I just went to the DNC site, now revised, and could not find it. Some related stats on the deficit are there.. special reports ... one on 'the bush budget or economy".



http://www.democrats.org
i think is the url of the official DNC site...

which has an obscure link way down on the dingy, dull looking page, link is something like 'GRAPHICS AND PICS", ... but it has dynamite graphs. One is of the surplus going to deficit, i think. Another site has such graphs ... i think something like "bushwentawol.org" .. anyhow has bush and awol or deserted in the url.

Graphs are at bottom of hugely long page.

I think a five Trill. surplus ..over ten years...went to a bush five Trill. deficit over ten years projected. debt, deficit, i confuse the two. accountants have no talent for clear terminology, just like the weather bureau watches and warnings.

I urged them.. dnc.. to make the graphs easier to find, but they probably just continued to ignore peon input... i never get replies, not even "we will consider it".
oscar

[leesa]

7. Dov Zakheim and the other thugs in the DOD had already

stolen over a trillions dollars prior to 9-11. Did they use it to pull of the 9-11 event?