The Clinton Surplus Myth - Craig Steiner - Townhall Finance Conservative Columnists and Financial Commentary
Here is a good interpretation of my position. Your graph was made by the same pukes that are trying to get you to buy their bag of dog shit. Congrats.
I think you and the author of the article you posted does not understand our total "debt" nor our "deficit"
The national debt is comprised of the Public Debt, and Intragovernmental Debt....the combination of the the two is the National Debt. The Public debt is what we have borrowed from others, like other countries who have bought our securities etc...I think we owe the most to countries like China and Saudi Arabia etc....this is the Public debt.
The intragovernmental debt is money the government has borrowed from things like social Security surplus.
the 'deficit' or surplus is a term used strictly for the yearly "Budget" spending....did government revenues collected for the year, exceed the gvt budget spending? If they took in more revenue than than what they spent, then it was a Budget Surplus. If the government took in revenues LESS THAN it spent then it was a Budget Deficit.
all revenues from income taxes and excise taxes and corporate taxes etc, AND the surplus monies from Social Security are accounted for in these budget revenues collected by the treasury....(on paper only).
The Public debt is what Clinton did reduce by $360 billion, not the "national" debt.... and he did have a SURPLUS in the budget process his last 3 years, most all of it coming from the surplus social security revenues.
What he did, was he took the social security fund surplus revenue and paid off the Public Debt, the debt we owed as a country to other countries etc...by doing this, we are less at risk in the long term for these other countries to ask us to "pay up". the SS surplus monies used to pay down the public debt, were BORROWED from Social Security, which raised what we owed OURSELVES, (the intragovernmental debt) and REDUCED what we owed others, (the Public debt)
so even though we did run a budget surplus, the NATIONAL DEBT, the debt of BOTH public and Inragvtmntal debt, did not go down, EVEN THOUGH WE RAN A SURPLUS in the budget Process....but what Clinton did, by using the SS surplus to pay down what we owed OTHERS, was a very financially sound move to do, it was A GOOD THING...
verses what the gvt did under President bush and under President Obama, which is taking the SS surplus revenues in the budget, and spending them on what income taxes etc revenues should be paying for....so the gvt is borrowing the social Security Surplus revenue to pay for more spending, and not to pay down what we owe Saudi Arabia etc....
I know it is confusing and seems complicated, but it really is not...if you spend some time on it.
Care