The problem with fiscal years is the run over from one administration to another. So Bush's wasteful spending kills the Clinton surplus.
Now CON$ ignore the fiscal year when they blame Bush's debt on Obama. As CON$ have been blaming the trillion dollar debt of his last fiscal year that ended Sept 30 2009 on Obama, not Bush. Suddenly with Obama, his fiscal year began 2 months BEFORE Obama's election according to CON$. Bush's last fiscal budget is Obama's debt.
Honest people count the economic years from Jan 1 to Dec 31 because it involves only one administration. CON$ rationalize what ever starting point for a year that suits their perverted purposes.
March 2, 2009
RUSH: To say that Obama has been in office only one month is not accurate from an effect on the world and an effect on the country standpoint. Barack Obama has been the controlling political authority on the economy for six months.
Government spending/accounting/budgeting is tracked by fiscal year.. period... even if it does get wishy-washy in that transitional year with a new prez, etc
Honest people do not count the calendar year for governmental spending... DISHONEST people do...
The base budget was still Bush and the 2008 congress'... additional spending appropriated by Obama and the 2009 congress are theirs... it is not a hard concept to grasp.. unless, that is, you are trying to play funny with numbers
FACT: NO FEDERAL SURPLUS since 1957
Fact: The year 2000 had a surplus. Every year has a SS/FICA tax surplus. No one is talking about a fiscal year.
No more than smoke and mirrors, Ed.
The Myth of the Clinton Surplus
The claim is generally made that Clinton had a surplus of $69 billion in FY1998, $123 billion in FY1999 and $230 billion in FY2000 . In that same link, Clinton claimed that the national debt had been reduced by $360 billion in the last three years, presumably FY1998, FY1999, and FY2000--though, interestingly, $360 billion is not the sum of the alleged surpluses of the three years in question ($69B + $123B + $230B = $422B, not $360B).
While not defending the increase of the federal debt under President Bush, it's curious to see Clinton's record promoted as having generated a surplus. It never happened. There was never a surplus and the facts support that position. In fact, far from a $360 billion reduction in the national debt in FY1998-FY2000, there was an increase of $281 billion.
Verifying this is as simple as accessing the U.S. Treasury (see note about this link below) website where the national debt is updated daily and a history of the debt since January 1993 can be obtained. Considering the government's fiscal year ends on the last day of September each year, and considering Clinton's budget proposal in 1993 took effect in October 1993 and concluded September 1994 (FY1994), here's the national debt at the end of each year of Clinton Budgets:
Fiscal
Year Year
Ending......................National Debt............Deficit
FY1993 09/30/1993 $4.411488 trillion
FY1994 09/30/1994 $4.692749 trillion $281.26 billion
FY1995 09/29/1995 $4.973982 trillion $281.23 billion
FY1996 09/30/1996 $5.224810 trillion $250.83 billion
FY1997 09/30/1997 $5.413146 trillion $188.34 billion
FY1998 09/30/1998 $5.526193 trillion $113.05 billion
FY1999 09/30/1999 $5.656270 trillion $130.08 billion
FY2000 09/29/2000 $5.674178 trillion $17.91 billion
FY2001 09/28/2001 $5.807463 trillion $133.29 billion
Understanding what happened requires understanding two concepts of what makes up the national debt. The national debt is made up of public debt and intergovernmental holdings. The public debt is debt held by the public, normally including things such as treasury bills, savings bonds, and other instruments the public can purchase from the government. Intergovernmental holdings, on the other hand, is when the government borrows money from itself--mostly borrowing money from social security.
Looking at the makeup of the national debt and the claimed surpluses for the last 4 Clinton fiscal years, we have the following table:
Fiscal
Year End
Date Claimed
Surplus Public
Debt Inter-gov
Holdings Total National
Debt
FY1997 09/30/1997 $3.789667T $1.623478T $5.413146T
FY1998 09/30/1998 $69.2B $3.733864T $55.8B $1.792328T $168.9B $5.526193T $113B
FY1999 09/30/1999 $122.7B $3.636104T $97.8B $2.020166T $227.8B $5.656270T $130.1B
FY2000 09/29/2000 $230.0B $3.405303T $230.8B $2.268874T $248.7B $5.674178T $17.9B
FY2001 09/28/2001 $3.339310T $66.0B $2.468153T $199.3B $5.807463T $133.3B
Notice that while the public debt went down in each of those four years, the intergovernmental holdings went up each year by a far greater amount--and, in turn, the total national debt (which is public debt + intergovernmental holdings) went up. Therein lies the discrepancy.
When it is claimed that Clinton paid down the national debt, that is patently false--as can be seen, the national debt went up every single year. What Clinton did do was pay down the public debt--notice that the claimed surplus is relatively close to the decrease in the public debt for those years. But he paid down the public debt by borrowing far more money in the form of intergovernmental holdings (mostly Social Security).
Update 3/31/2009: The following quote from an article at CBS confirms my explanation of the Myth of the Clinton Surplus, and the entire article essentially substantiates what I wrote.
"
Over the past 25 years, the government has gotten used to the fact that Social Security is providing free money to make the rest of the deficit look smaller," said Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. 
