Folks, was the Clinton surplus a myth or was it real? I hear we were on track

[secondwind]

to pay off our debt in 2007.

[Gman]

1. There was a national debt number when he left office

But if things stayed the same, the debt would have been payed off at some point I forget.

[secondwind]

5. I think they predicted more or less by 2007, I forget.

[Mattias]

10. Clinton surplus

Some conservative, well using that term would actually insult real conservatives. So I will go again. Some uneducated self-proclaimed experts currently state that there never existed a surplus during president Clinton. As always when faced with facts they deny them. There was an unquestionable surplus that peaked at 3 % of GDP during president Clinton. OECD, IMF, CBO, FED, Eurostat and a number of non partisan organizations have this data. Open for anyone to watch. The self proclaimed experts try to put a smokescreen around that fact. Stating that it was creative accounting and moving money around that created an impression of a surplus. Economists have a very diffrent approach. Basically deriving the national accounts by a simple formula. G(government)+C(private consumption)+I(Investments)+X(exports)-IM(imports)=GDP. It is a basic and very crude model, but also efficient. Basically if the states produce a huge surplus and the federal government a minor deficit, the public sector, G, will show a surplus. This is because the public sector is integrated. If a state fails the federal government will have to come to the rescue. If Social security produces a deficit the federal government will have to cover the difference. What those who do not know better is trying to do is shuffle around the deck so that parts of the public sector that did show a deficit are highlighted as being all of the public sector. Had they been able to focus enough to succeed in econ 101 they would have known that the public sector extends to all parts of the economy being inside the public sector realm. This is true for all parts of the economy, a company is responsible for its subsidiaries and cannot claim record profits by putting all costs in a subsidiary and then exclude it in the results. A household is equally as an economic entity responsible for other members. The simplest and the consensus way to measure a public sector surplus or deficit is simple arithmetic. Taking all tax revenue (T) and subtract all public sector costs will give the answer. T-G as simple as that. During president Clinton the best year 1999 produced tax revenues of 21 % of GDP and total spending at 18 % of GDP. Basic math, something many GOP members have a hard time with gives us the equation 21-18=X, 3=X. So no matter how you count it the surplus was and will remain 3 % of GDP. That is a factual truism, no ideology, no belief, no fantasies and no lies can change it. You can call a stone a tree, but the stone will happily stay a stone.

If I was a real republican, a specie so rare now days that they should be put on the UNESCO list of soon exterminated beings. I would take a shoot at the sustainability of the surplus. With OECD, IMF, CBO against you going for a lie is a potentially dangerous path, Akin is a good precedence. The surplus had a causality with the stock market boom of the late 90s. The revenue from capital gains increased to almost double the long term trend level. Even before president Bush took of into the stratosphere with tax cuts and wars the surplus turned into a deficit as the effects of the stock marked bust affected government revenues. The deficit was manageable until president Bush started using the Amex card to finance a war, about 1 % of GDP. Which as long as growth is around 2 % still lowers the real debt in relation to GDP even if the nominal debt increases. So the surplus of president Clinton had turned into a deficit even with no actions from the next President. It was not a sustainable surplus but it had turned into a manageable deficit.

GOP for some reason look only at nominal debt and not real debt. The deficit of today would if you count dollar at par value be instead of 10 % of GDP be 91000% of 1800 US GDP. GOP puts forward as reason that there never existed a surplus the fact that no actual repayment was ever done. In this they miss the fact that the last time USA actually re payed debt was in 1896. After that growth and inflation has been the prime payer of outstanding debt. There are 3 ways to pay off national debt, growth, inflation and actual repayment. Of the 3, growth is superior. Assume an economy grows from USD 100 to USD 200 while the public debt grows from USD 100 to USD 150. That country owes less than before. Inflation is the next best option assuming its under control. Luckily GOP don't know this, it will be fascinating should they win to see how they will get money to both lower taxes, increase military spending and make actual repayments of the national debt. Mitt Romney would truly have to be a magician to pull that off.

[bemildred]

2. All of our public finances are pretty much made up as we go along.

Been like that since we got addicted to fiat money in the 70s, and then Raygun released the hounds for good.

Have you noticed how we can come up with trillions out of nowhere nowadays, yet are always "in debt"?

[progree]

13. It's borrowed from the Chinese, Japanese, individual American citizens and institutions that buy US

Treasury securities. It is very very real debt.

[bemildred]

16. It's real debt, but it's debt in fake money.

Nothing where you can get more by adding a zero is real.

[progree]

18. Nobody "added a zero". Sorry about that. Tell Greece, Spain etc. their debt problems aren't real

Tell underwater homeowners and those facing resets that their debt problems aren't real.

[bemildred]

19. The Fed adds zeroes whenever it likes.

But don't let me interfere with your denial.

[progree]

20. Nope, they do not. But don't let me interfere with your fantastical delusions

And if you are one of the government debt bond-holders, you'd be singing a different tune about "fake money".

[bemildred]

21. It's paper, when it's anything at all.

It's a medium of exchange, it has no physical meaning whatsoever, it is not real, it is little dots on magnetic media. You can make thousands on the markets and lose twice as much tomorrow, and nobody would even notice. Mitt Rmoney has hundreds of milions, how much does it weigh? Does it weigh more than what's in your empty pockets?

[progree]

25. Its not "just paper" when the sheriff comes to evict you from your home. Go bug the freepers nt

[bemildred]

26. OK, it's special paper, with little colored threads in it, and holographs.

Mass produced. Did you know there was a big problem with people printing their own money on their laser printers, which is why we have vari-colored paper money now? Does that sound like something real and substantial to you?

[progree]

27. Yes. Now go bug the freepers. Most of us are working on campaigns. nt

[bemildred]

28. Don't let me drag you away from your work Sport. nt

[bemildred]

22. Put it another way: the surplus is just as real as the debt.

They are both real or both fake. I vote for fake.

[elleng]

3. It was real, or would have been in foreseeable future,

and as I recall greenspun was CONCERNED we'd have too much $$$ sloshing around in U.S. accounts, so what to do? what to do? Oh, W+ buddies knew, have a couple of wars!

Sorry no links, just my memory at the moment, but I do think my points are correct.

[EC]

6. Not the wars

Greenspan and Bush and his crew thought that the money should go back to the rich as tax cuts since they were paying too much. They said they were paying too much to create a surplus....nevermind emergencies or the like.

[secondwind]

4. thanks for replies, although am still confused, but less so!

[Warpy]

7. Republicans call it "imaginary" because the surplus came from

workers overpaying their social security tax, something they'd been robbing for 20 years at that point.

Those overpayments, in the absence of anything stupid like a war or two of occupation, would have paid down the debt by 2007.

It would have been on the backs of the poorest workers instead of the plutocrats who created the debt, but it would have been paid down.

[mother earth]

8. Absolutely NO MYTH.

http://factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/
The Budget and Deficit Under Clinton

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 6 Sep 2010.

[mother earth]

9. Add to that, Republican presidents have historically & factually been the true spenders, Reagan & GW

are glaring examples...the Dems may have the reputation for tax and spend, but what Democratic presidents do is straighten out their fiscal messes & it's about time that people realize it! Those are the facts, plain & simple. Republican claims barely pass any scratch tests. They are habitual liars, and this is why they are a dying party. And the only place they are cutting taxes is for the wealthy, and it benefits them, how's that for self-serving patriotism?

You can either hold on to their lies & the past, or you can embrace truth & progress. Forward, NOT backward!

Don't ever let anyone diss Bill Clinton on this, he deserves much kudos & respect.

[progree]

14. Some more on that point --

http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com/p/national-debt.html

[mother earth]

23. Too good to wait for opening your link: TY progree.

THE LAST 3 REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTS HAVE ACCOUNTED FOR $9.2 TRILLION OF THE INCREASE IN THE NATIONAL DEBT
Every President, from Truman to Carter, steadily paid down the staggering debt that was run up in our fight against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. That pattern came to a screeching halt with Reagan/Bush and Bush. Clinton’s fiscal policy was a brief respite during this orgy of deficit spending.

Clinton's economic policies balanced 5 budgets, which is 5 more balanced budgets than the last 5 Republican presidents combined.

President Obama, like President Clinton, inherited a sea of red ink and a recession from his predecessor. He, like President Clinton, recognizes the importance of getting America back to work and then getting our fiscal house in order.

[mother earth]

24. There's NOTHING conservative about the GOP, in fact that label squarely belongs to the Dems.

Unequivocally, the spenders are republicans, and they give away all of the entitlements to themselves & the wealthy.

[progree]

15. So why did the national debt keep increasing every year? I think because there are other surpluses

besides Social Security, such as Medicare, and like Social Security, they were being loaned to the general fund and being so being added to the federal debt. As the federal government general fund must pay back Medicare and Social Security when these programs run deficits and then must draw upon their trust funds.

Anyway, here is the national debt at the end of each fiscal year -- it is increasing throughout (in $ Billions):
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

9/30/96 5224.8 End of FY 1996
9/30/97 5413.1 End of FY 1997
9/30/98 5526.2
9/30/99 5656.3
9/30/00 5674.2
9/30/01 5807.5 End of FY 2001
9/30/02 6228.2 End of FY 2002

[Mattias]

11. Real and nomninall money

It is basically a GOP trick (I hope) or total lack of education in economics (which would be sad). Basically there are two deficits/surpluses. The nominal and the real.
A nominal deficit means that in money you spend more than you receive. This is a meaningless way to measure any type of economic action.
The real deficit is what matters.
To make it simple, suppose you are the premier in an economy with a GDP of 1 000 billion. Suppose the national debt is 500 billion. This gives you an economy with a debt to GDP of 50 %.
Assume that over a ten year period this economy doubles in size in real terms and experience a consistent inflation of 5 % per annum. This will give the economy a nominal GDP of 3 628 at the end of the period.
Should the budget be balanced over this period the debt will still be 500 billion but its share of GDP will have been reduced to less than 14 % of GDP. So without paying a cent the debt has been reduced by 36 % of GDP. This is assuming the budget is fully neutral. Should the revenue exceed the expenses and assuming the budget stays neutral. Actual repayments would reduce it even more. Should your government wish to expand you could take on 1 314 billion more in debt and still be owing 50 % of GDP.
Both Great Britain who owed 214 % of GDP and the United States who owed 129 % after WWII choose to let inflation and growth repay their public debt. No money was ever used to repay debt, interest was paid in order and growth and inflation took care of the rest. The first time debt increased in real terms was paradoxally when Prime minister Thatcher and President Reagan won their respective elections.
If a county owes 15 gazillions fake dollar and has a GDP of 1 gazillions of fake dollar it is in trouble. If a country owes 15 gazillions fake dollar and has a GDP of 10 000 gazillions fake dollars its biggest trouble is not debt.
GOP has a problem differing between real and nominal money. This makes the implication that they if they have economist should fire them and if they don’t should employ some. A Candidate whose one election promise is to fix the economy cannot be a person that skipped econ 101

[progree]

12. They were kind of, sort of, real surpluses

Last edited Sat Jan 26, 2019, 04:22 PM - Edit history (2)

The U.S. Federal Deficit By Year - There were surpluses in the last 4 Clinton years: FY 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 (well, the last 8 months of FY 2001 fell into the Bush administration). Anyway G.W. Bush inherited a string of surpluses and managed to turn that around into 8 straight years of deficits and to nearly double the national debt.

URL: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/Historicals
Table 1.1 - http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/omb/budget/fy2013/assets/hist01z1.xls

See 4th column.

But here is the national debt at the end of each fiscal year -- it is increasing throughout (in $ Billions):
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

9/30/96   5224.8     End of FY 1996
9/30/97   5413.1     End of FY 1997
9/30/98   5526.2     End of FY 1998
9/30/99   5656.3     End of FY 1999
9/30/00   5674.2     End of FY 2000
9/30/01   5807.5     End of FY 2001
9/30/02   6228.2     End of FY 2002

So how can we have surpluses in FY 1998 through FY 2001, but have increasing national debt every year?

The main reason is the federal government's borrowing and spending of the surplus social security cash flow. In those years (and until about 3 ? years ago) more social security taxes were collected than were needed to pay current benefits. The federal government's general fund borrowed the Social Security surplus, which is then counted as part of the federal debt -- it is money owed to Social Security by the federal government.

To write about after the campaign is over -- the publicly held debt and intra-governmental debt and all that.

ON EDIT 9/18/12 1131 ET: I added the 9/30/02 6228.2 line just to be sure.

ON EDIT 1/26/19: Clarified that Social Security is not the culprit, but rather the federal govt borrowing from it (the only reason I bother fixing such an old post is because a current post points to it -- http://www.democraticunderground.com/111622439#post5 )

[mother earth]

17. Taxes for the wealthy have been slashed significantly through those years. What is expected then,

less debt or exactly what has grown significantly?

SS & medicare have never been the problem, those are merely other scapegoats that the GOP seeks to privatize to continue whoring off the nation to that pious group of capitalists, those trickle down (by mostly peeing) job creators.

The weight of our budget has been resting squarely on the backs of working and middle class America,
literally the backbone of this country. There's no mystery, it's the single issue at the heart of all of our problems, the decreasing tax rates for the wealthy coupled with the disappearing job market for the middle class replaced with those minimum wage service jobs. EVERYTHING skewed, once again, to help the wealthy, those who are truly the "entitlement" problem. Is it any wonder lopsided accounting has overtaken the drive for a balanced budget?

[Mattias]

29. National Debt

The debt has increased since 2002 in both nominal and real terms. During the late 1990s there was a real surplus but a nominally constant debt. That is During the last years of President Clinton the debt in dollars did not change. What changed was the GDP that grew in real terms with about 4 % and inflation that was around 2 %. This basically expanded the sum of the nations assets while holding debt constant. To try and simplify imagine you buy a house today for 100 000, and take a mort age of 100 000. Assume that your house during the next ten years increase in value with 25 % to 125 000. Also assume you pay nothing bar interest on your mort age. I know in current circumstances a house might be a bad analogy by anyway.

So now after ten years you hold an asset worth 125 000 and owe 100 000. You have thereby increased your net worth with 25 000. Also assume as you buy your house you get a job offering giving you 50 000 per annum in salary. Assume this income rises with the price of your house so that ten years later you earn 67 500. Even as your debt is exactly the same as when you took it. Your net worth is now higher and your income is higher. If the interest has not changed you now pay it with your 67 500 salary rather than your 50 000 salary. This means the total amount of your income you allocate to serving your debt is in real terms less than initially. Also the net worth of what you invested in is in real terms higher than previously.

Republicans fail to understand or comprehend this. If government spends money to invest in education, infrastructure, health care etc the government takes a mort age. With growth this debt will be less and less of a burden. The republicans stating that the debt did not decrees during President Clinton are looking at nominal money. It is like saying that a T-Ford cost 100 dollars 1912 so Ford is overpricing there cars, or that you could buy a house for 1 000 dollars in 1948. It is fantasynomics, real debt during President Clinton declined because the country grew and the debt was stable so less of the economy was needed to repay it all.

When the debt started climbing again it was not because the government invested in the future or that incomes fell. President Bush was the first president in history to wage a war with an amex. Also the first president to lower taxes in wartime. That created a deficit of 3 - 4 % yearly which might not seem high with todays numbers but it built a debt burden totally unnecessary as the country was in ok shape to carry that burden. The unnecessary hit mr Bush in the face as the financial markets collapsed, there was no reserves to call on, there was no surplus to let erode. Government was running a deficit in good times and a pretty bad option is to raise taxes when bad things happens to finance a stimulus.

President Obama took over an economy in free fall with no real way to pay for it all whit out borrowing. Which is a good idea in circumstances like this. Had mr Bush turned over an economy in the same shape as he received it. President Obama would have alot more options. President Obama has been fiscally walking on sharp knives for his entire presidency. Done to Little in some peoples opinions including my own but we must realize his options was limited. Had he inherited President Clinton's economy the deficit would still be enormous but a lot less measured of GDP. President Obama and the FED prevented a second great depression, that depressing took 15 years to get out off. mr Bush inheritance will make this a long walk back but not a 15 year march.

Should Romney win the only substantial promise yet is that taxes will be decreased with 5 trillion. If that is fiscally responsible someone needs to redefine fiscal responsible. No financing is presented to how that gap will addressed. No plan for jobs except that private sector will do it. Something it has for about three years now. If President Obama wins i doubt he will deliver a surplus to his successor, I am confident though he will deliver a growth balanced budget. If mr Romney wins I doubt the deficit he will hand over will be controllable or fixable.

[mother earth]

30. Well said. There's no easy way out of this Bush Depression...the GOP sunk this ship, when Obama is

re-elected, it's going to take years to put this country back on track. Great reform is direly needed, we don't have the luxury of
putting that off or for trying to appear "bipartisan" any longer, we never could afford to deal with the ludicrous belief that the elite need more tax cuts, or that what was done to this country during GW years was or is in any way excusable. What the GOP has wrought, both then and currently, is criminal and reckless.

The collective has to embrace it's not about ME, it's not about I've got mine, to hell with you, it's about WE, and start living with
conscience. When basic needs are satisfied, the animal in man is no longer animal, there really is an incredible return on living with heart and doing what's right, it's the very worth of our society, our humanity at stake.

The economic problem has touched all parts of society, it's brought everything that's WRONG into light...so thank you to GW, Darth Vader & Mitt-wit, for showing us how messed up it all really is, and the GOP is the party of chaos and greed.

[Mattias]

31. And to add

No President facing a recession has ever had to deal with the compexity President Obama face. Going back to the first depression the republican President Hoover after finding that private sector would not solve the problems enacted a fiscal stimulus of 0,5 % of GDP which by todays standards seem meagere. But rembering that the federal budget by 1930 was 4 % of GDP it was by thoose standards quite large. President Roosevelt enacted an even bigger stimulus in the big deal that put a downward spiral on the unemployment rate. Unfortunately by his own and from advice the policy was followed by a to earyly austerity causing the "recession in a depression" of 1937. What should be remembered is that Roosevelt was expolring unchartered waters as Keynesianism was yet to become a economic theory. John Maynard Keyned only published his groundbreaking book "General Theory..." in 1936.

In modern times there has been three recessions in the US, where one was bordering on a depression. The first beeing the one during President Reagan, it ended in 1983 and job creation started to show greately positive numbers. But many Reagan worshipers forget that of the jobs created during the two years following the recession 1.3 million jobs where created in the public sector. Accounting for demographics that would mean 1.5 million more jobs. Or about 1.5 percent less unemployment. Also President Reagan by increasing defence spending with 1 % of GDP apart from the goverment job creation provided a massive fiscal stimulus. The next recession came with President W.Bush and was countered with a 2.6 million increase in public sector employment combined with taxcuts.

The third and most lethal depression is the one President Obama was handed. During his term for the first time in since the 19th century the public payroll in a recession has decreased with 700 000. The private sector has provided the only increase. President Obamas practical policy has been more neoliberal than President Reagan. Not by choice but by obstruction from the GOP. Had the economy added jobs in the same phase as previous recessions there would not have been a net gain of 4 million jobs. The net gain would have been 4 000 000 + 700 000 + 1 500 000 = 6 200 000 jobs. Republicans in congress has thereby inflicted unemployment on 2.2 million citizens. No recession and certanly no depression has ever in modern times shed public sector jobs but this one. And still President Obamas economy is growing, not fast enough, but the fault is less on democrats then obstructionist republicans. Once the GOP was a party that wanted its countrys best, now it is a party that wants power more than anything else. If they get it the question is do they know what to do with it.