The Deficit: Comparing 2010 to 2000 when we had a surplus

[Toro]

What is relevant is the net debt plus the unfunded liabilities.

so, if I recall we never hashed this out, are we in trouble, or not? when do the unfunded liabilities take us down?

If Medicare and Medicaid continue to grow at their current rate and we do nothing about it, we are in trouble. By estimates I have seen, it becomes a real problem at the end of the decade.

 

[DontBeStupid]

Revenue's: Currently are down 5.7% as a percent of GDP compared to 2000
Top marginal tax rates are at an all time low, Capital gains rates are 5% below an all time low. Hard to make a case the wealthy are overtaxed and by historical standards they are undertaxed. The Bush tax cuts should be repealed

Defense: Currently up 1.75% as a percent of GDP compared to 2000
You can't run 3 wars and maintain troops in places of all wars past. We have a constitutional mandate to defend the country but we don't have one to defend the rest of the world. Need a real discussion here what is affordable and practicable. Let other coutries pay for their own defense.

Medicare: Currently up 1.1% as a percentage of GDP compared to 2000
Well we can thank Bush for perscription drug benefits but the Ryan plan at least trys to make a real effort to control costs. Democrats are wrong for demonizing the plan and mobilizing seniors against it. With some type of benefit floor Ryan's plan is credible and should be adopted.

Unemployment compensation: Currently up .97% of GDP compared to 2000
We need a revenue nuetral restructuring of our tax code to generate jobs. My choice, eliminate corporate income taxes, raise the capital gains tax to the level of income tax, tax net capital sent overseas. This will generate tax revenue from overseas investment and provide capital for local businesses to grow.

Health: Currently up .82% of GDP compared to 2000
You can't expand access without significant cost cuts in the system. Republicans need to stop talking about repeal and modify the system to impose significant cost reductions that were left out of the original bill. Stop playing political games and help the country.

Social Security: Currently up .70% of GDP compared to 2000
No idea what to do here. Should have been taken care of long ago. Most want back the money they put in but the money was long since given to their grandparents. Have no sense of a solution.

Welcome to the Boards. As you can see, many people here don't want to respond to your post or ideas. They'd much rather pick out one politically charged line and then rant on that for a bit. Such is life I guess. But, I'm going to try and get back on topic

Historical Federal Receipt and Outlay Summary

That's a link to tax receipts and outlays adjusted to 2005 dollars. Your percentages will differ, but the same idea is there. As you can see, when Bush cut taxes, receipts went down three years straight. That has never happened before and pretty much proves we are on the left side of the Laffer Curve. As such, raising taxes will increase revenue. Also, you will see that receipts in 2009 and 2010 are almost the same as 2005 and only slight above 2000. Anyone who says revenue is fine after being flat for a decade is lying to you. Taxes need to be raised. Period.

As for spending cuts, they can happen provided they do not involve laying people off. Raising the unemployment rate now would mean more in unemployment compensation, and that's not good. Yes, you can make cuts in the military without shrinking the military. Closing bases in Germany, where we have some 50,000 troops, would be the type of thing I would like to see happen. Same with Japan where we have 30,000.

SS is actually fine, and once the government starts bringing in enough to re-pay the Trust, it should be back to normal, despite screams from the Right. Medicare is different and I totally disagree with you about the Ryan Plan. Ryan's plan would eliminate Medicare. Gone. Bye bye. He would then implement a new voucher plan, that is designed to grow slower than the rate of increases in health care. This means, within a decade, seniors will be paying their entire SS checks and their vouchers in order to buy private insurance. That's neither practical, nor sustainable, nor ethical. We can't let that happen.

Medicare fix is easy (ish). Leave it in place but start applying restrictions on health care providers to slow the cost of health care. Slow that down, and we are fine. Obama and the Dems passed a law to do just that and it kicks in over the next couple years. Early estimates are that it has extended Medicare by 12 years and will lower the deficit by several hundred billion over the next decade. It's a good start.

How was that?

 

[DontBeStupid]

What is relevant is the net debt plus the unfunded liabilities.

so, if I recall we never hashed this out, are we in trouble, or not? when do the unfunded liabilities take us down?

The way I understand it, SS never will. It's a myth. Worse case, benefits get dropped to 75% of normal.

Medicare though, that becomes a major problem within a decade if we can't slow the rise in health care costs.

 

[Sactowndog]

FYI, if Microsoft ran their books the way the government does (using cash accounting principles) you might have a valid comparison here. Since they don't, you are a bit off in asserting that my insistence that the deficit going up is proof that we did not have a surplus.

If the government ran their books the way Microsoft does then alot of the expenses would be deferred and not on the budget. Just like some revenue would also be deferred.

This discussion of whether the government should use cash or accrual based accounting has no value to the point of the discussion. Clearly in 2000 we were much closer to leaving within our means than we are now....

Using GDP or inflation adjusted dollars is the accepted way comparing across years. I took GDP because I don't trust the inflation numbers ever since the government started paying interest based on inflation accounting. Those who have a doctoral degree in statistics or accounting feel free to share your expertise. The rest are just proving your ignorance.

If someone would like to add something of substance feel free

 

[Sactowndog]

1. I hope that in the future you will avoid the prevarication [if I were a liberal, I would of course, say 'lie'] of the Clinton administration, and admit that there was no surplus.

I have enough accounting to also know that you are telling half of the story. You are accounting for Revenue in an "accrued fashion" and you are accounting for Spending on a "cash basis". I don't know if on an accrued basis we had a surplus or not because I have only seen half the data.

But enough of this BS. You seem at least reasonably intelligent so please quit wasting the thread talking about accounting methodology and address the obvious gaps to getting back to fiscal sanity.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

A surplus is the difference between revenues and expenditures. We had a surplus in 1998, 1999 and 2000.

The gross national debt rose because of increases in liabilities in the SS and Medicare and Medicaid trusts. However, that is intra-government debt. If you net out the credits to the Treasury with debits to the trusts, United States federal government debt fell.

We did not have a surplus. What we had was accounting tricks that counted the SS revenue as part of the general revenue during those years.

Nope. We had included SS disbursements and receipts in the budget for many years prior.

A surplus is when revenues exceed expenses. We had more money coming into the Treasury than was being paid out, and that money was used to pay off publicly traded bonds. The total amount if publicly traded debt fell. This is a fact.

Again, there must be hundreds of conservative economists out there willing to prove that there was no surplus. Please link some.

The government itself proves there was no surplus.

Cash accounting counts revenue when received, and expenses when they are paid. That would mean that, if revenue actually exceeded expenses, the debt would go down. That is a factual statement. It is also a factual statement that the debt has gone up every single year since Eisenhower was president.

People who don't understand how government accounting works look at total debt and assume that rising gross debt means there are deficits. You would fail an introductory finance course for making this assertion.

The cash flow statement for a corporation is similar to the way the government accounts for it's books. Government uses cash flow accounting while the cash flow statement reconciles cash inflows and outflows with accrual accounting. So they are similar. Likewise, comparing gross debt for the government is similar to comparing gross debt for a company. It doesn't matter much if you use cash or accrual accounting. So the analogy works.

People who think I do not understand accounting assume I am talking about something other than what I am saying.

The deficit increased every single year under Clinton. That is an immediate impact of the fact that revenues fell behind expenses every single year Clinton was president. I will admit that the budget Clinton submitted for 2000 contained a surplus, but that does not mean that additional spending bills were not authorized during that fiscal year that pushed the budget over the edge. Nor does it mean that revenue was as high as projected.

Clinton was the last president to submit a balanced, even surplus, budget, but the last actual surplus was under Eisenhower.

 

[Sactowndog]

Revenue's: Currently are down 5.7% as a percent of GDP compared to 2000
Top marginal tax rates are at an all time low, Capital gains rates are 5% below an all time low. Hard to make a case the wealthy are overtaxed and by historical standards they are undertaxed. The Bush tax cuts should be repealed

I agree but is NOW the time to do that? I truly don't know but I have my doubts.

Reasonable concern. If taxes were in the middle or at the high end I would definately have the same concern. But given that marginal tax rates are at or near historical lows I think they can be raised for those over $1M without overly hurting the economy.

It was done in the late 90's by Clinton and a Republican congress. I think we can do it again.

 

[Sactowndog]

What is relevant is the net debt plus the unfunded liabilities.

so, if I recall we never hashed this out, are we in trouble, or not? when do the unfunded liabilities take us down?

If Medicare and Medicaid continue to grow at their current rate and we do nothing about it, we are in trouble. By estimates I have seen, it becomes a real problem at the end of the decade.

Yep Dems should not be panning the Medicare plan just like Republicans should accede to some tax increases.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

If the government ran their books the way Microsoft does then alot of the expenses would be deferred and not on the budget. Just like some revenue would also be deferred.

This discussion of whether the government should use cash or accrual based accounting has no value to the point of the discussion. Clearly in 2000 we were much closer to leaving within our means than we are now....

Using GDP or inflation adjusted dollars is the accepted way comparing across years. I took GDP because I don't trust the inflation numbers ever since the government started paying interest based on inflation accounting. Those who have a doctoral degree in statistics or accounting feel free to share your expertise. The rest are just proving your ignorance.

If someone would like to add something of substance feel free

My post was not a criticism of cash v accrual accounting, it was simply stating that comparing them is more complicated that simply pointing to the numbers and claiming something based on what they look like.

MS expenses are counted when they are incurred, government debt is counted when it is spent. That means that the government can borrow money, count it as revenue, and call it a surplus. If MS had to borrow money to cover operating expenses it would count as an expense and reduce their income for that year.

Using GDP and saying that revenue as percentage of GDP is down is, at best, disingenuous. If GDP goes up 50% and revenue as a percent of GDP drops from 20% to 15% revenue actually increases. Unless you tell us what GDP actually is, or give us the actual revenue amounts in inflation adjusted dollars, your numbers mean nothing. That is why I said your posting what you did does not actually tell us anything.

Would you like to add something of substance now, or will you continue throwing around out of context numbers and percentages like they actually mean something?

 

[PoliticalChic]

1. There are, actually, two kinds of government debt, public debt, which we owe to bondholders and other investors, and intragovernmental debt, which is debt the government owes to itself. National debt is actually the total of the two. President Clinton was speaking of the public debt alone, ignoring the intragovernmental portion. This is because the intragovernmental debt goes up every year, and because there are some gullible folks who would believe it. Shoe fit?

2. The White House OMB reports a total deficit of $320.4 billion over the eight year period, ’93-2000. Historical Tables | The White House (table 1.1) And they also report a national debt increase of $1.6 trillion over the eight years. So, how to explain Clinton’s ‘historic surplus’?

3. The 1983 Greenspan Commission initiated changes in Social Security that generated large surpluses. “As soon as the first surpluses began to role in, in 1985, the money was put into the general revenue fund and spent on other government programs.” How Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan Pulled off the Greatest Fraud Ever Perpetrated against the American People | Dissident Voice

a. In 1985, the Social Security Trust Fund surplus was only $7.5 billion, a decade later it was $60.4 billion.

b. In 2000, the surplus was $152 billion. Clinton took the $152 billion, and counted it as income, instead of the debt it actually repesented.

c. “Instead of Social Security subsidizing the rest of the budget, the rest of the budget will have to subsidize Social Security.” Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/31/politics/washingtonpost/main4906936.shtml


I hope that in the future you will avoid the prevarication [if I were a liberal, I would of course, say 'lie'] of the Clinton administration, and admit that there was no surplus.

Finance 101 - A deficit is when expenses exceed revenues. A surplus is when revenues exceed expenses. Nothing more. A rising gross debt does not imply a deficit. Money comes into the Treasury. Money goes out of the Treasury. It is a very simple concept.

More money came into the Treasury during the last years of the 1990s than was paid out. That money was used to pay down publicly-traded government bonds.

Gross intra-government debt is irrelevant in the discussion of surpluses and deficits. If one is "avoiding prevarication," one would also note the rise in the intra-government assets at the time, which offset the rise in intra-government debt since a liability of the Treasury is an asset of the trusts. A correct financial analysis of the government's financial position looks at both sides of the balance sheet, not just one.

Common Parlance, listed under Communication 101- the implication of the Clinton propaganda is that his brilliant management of the government allowed him to spend less than he took in.
You must know that that is not the case...merely that he emptied what Gore called the Social Security 'Lock Box.'

The terms surplus and lock box are used for the same purpose, to obfuscate the facts.
The Democrats, also known as the Left, has used fast talk to manipulate their base.
The Right has tried to do the same, but lacks the support of the Old Left Media, and so it hardly pays to compare them.
Sadly, it appears that you are prepared to support the Left's duplicitious blandishments.

My contention remains, the indication that there was no surplus provided by Clintonian machinations is a perusal of the national debt data that I provided.

 

[Toro]

We did not have a surplus. What we had was accounting tricks that counted the SS revenue as part of the general revenue during those years.

Nope. We had included SS disbursements and receipts in the budget for many years prior.

A surplus is when revenues exceed expenses. We had more money coming into the Treasury than was being paid out, and that money was used to pay off publicly traded bonds. The total amount if publicly traded debt fell. This is a fact.

Again, there must be hundreds of conservative economists out there willing to prove that there was no surplus. Please link some.

The government itself proves there was no surplus.

Cash accounting counts revenue when received, and expenses when they are paid. That would mean that, if revenue actually exceeded expenses, the debt would go down. That is a factual statement. It is also a factual statement that the debt has gone up every single year since Eisenhower was president.

People who don't understand how government accounting works look at total debt and assume that rising gross debt means there are deficits. You would fail an introductory finance course for making this assertion.

The cash flow statement for a corporation is similar to the way the government accounts for it's books. Government uses cash flow accounting while the cash flow statement reconciles cash inflows and outflows with accrual accounting. So they are similar. Likewise, comparing gross debt for the government is similar to comparing gross debt for a company. It doesn't matter much if you use cash or accrual accounting. So the analogy works.

People who think I do not understand accounting assume I am talking about something other than what I am saying.

The deficit increased every single year under Clinton. That is an immediate impact of the fact that revenues fell behind expenses every single year Clinton was president. I will admit that the budget Clinton submitted for 2000 contained a surplus, but that does not mean that additional spending bills were not authorized during that fiscal year that pushed the budget over the edge. Nor does it mean that revenue was as high as projected.

Clinton was the last president to submit a balanced, even surplus, budget, but the last actual surplus was under Eisenhower.

The government does NOT prove there was a deficit. If you go back and look at the budgets, they show that the government brought in more revenues than it spent. That is a surplus, full stop. It is not debatable.

Publicly traded debt of the US government fell in the last part of the 1990s. Why? Because the government generated more cash than it spent. Again, this is a fact. It is not debatable. If the amount of publicly traded debt has fallen, it means that the government is funding itself and using excess cash to pay down debt. That excess cash is a surplus. In fact, the CBO in the late 90s estimated that if the conditions at the time continued, the United States would retire all of it's publicly traded debt within a decade. This could not possibly have happened had the government been running deficits.

Net debt of the United States fell. Again, that is a fact and not debatable. This also could not have occurred had the government been running deficits.

And I will ask once again, since no one making this argument has done so yet. There must be hundreds of conservative economists who also acknowledge there was no surplus, since it seems obvious to conservative ideologues who aren't economists nor have much financial training. So link a few.

 

[Toro]

1. There are, actually, two kinds of government debt, public debt, which we owe to bondholders and other investors, and intragovernmental debt, which is debt the government owes to itself. National debt is actually the total of the two. President Clinton was speaking of the public debt alone, ignoring the intragovernmental portion. This is because the intragovernmental debt goes up every year, and because there are some gullible folks who would believe it. Shoe fit?

2. The White House OMB reports a total deficit of $320.4 billion over the eight year period, ’93-2000. Historical Tables | The White House (table 1.1) And they also report a national debt increase of $1.6 trillion over the eight years. So, how to explain Clinton’s ‘historic surplus’?

3. The 1983 Greenspan Commission initiated changes in Social Security that generated large surpluses. “As soon as the first surpluses began to role in, in 1985, the money was put into the general revenue fund and spent on other government programs.” How Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan Pulled off the Greatest Fraud Ever Perpetrated against the American People | Dissident Voice

a. In 1985, the Social Security Trust Fund surplus was only $7.5 billion, a decade later it was $60.4 billion.

b. In 2000, the surplus was $152 billion. Clinton took the $152 billion, and counted it as income, instead of the debt it actually repesented.

c. “Instead of Social Security subsidizing the rest of the budget, the rest of the budget will have to subsidize Social Security.” Andrew Biggs, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/03/31/politics/washingtonpost/main4906936.shtml


I hope that in the future you will avoid the prevarication [if I were a liberal, I would of course, say 'lie'] of the Clinton administration, and admit that there was no surplus.

Finance 101 - A deficit is when expenses exceed revenues. A surplus is when revenues exceed expenses. Nothing more. A rising gross debt does not imply a deficit. Money comes into the Treasury. Money goes out of the Treasury. It is a very simple concept.

More money came into the Treasury during the last years of the 1990s than was paid out. That money was used to pay down publicly-traded government bonds.

Gross intra-government debt is irrelevant in the discussion of surpluses and deficits. If one is "avoiding prevarication," one would also note the rise in the intra-government assets at the time, which offset the rise in intra-government debt since a liability of the Treasury is an asset of the trusts. A correct financial analysis of the government's financial position looks at both sides of the balance sheet, not just one.

Common Parlance, listed under Communication 101- the implication of the Clinton propaganda is that his brilliant management of the government allowed him to spend less than he took in.
You must know that that is not the case...merely that he emptied what Gore called the Social Security 'Lock Box.'

The terms surplus and lock box are used for the same purpose, to obfuscate the facts.
The Democrats, also known as the Left, has used fast talk to manipulate their base.
The Right has tried to do the same, but lacks the support of the Old Left Media, and so it hardly pays to compare them.
Sadly, it appears that you are prepared to support the Left's duplicitious blandishments.

My contention remains, the indication that there was no surplus provided by Clintonian machinations is a perusal of the national debt data that I provided.

PC, answer this question. What happens to nontradable government liabilities of the Treasury when there is an unexpected surge in employment and payroll taxes? Does it go up or down? Why?

 

[Toro]

Again, Finance 101 - An increase in gross debt does not imply a deficit.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Nope. We had included SS disbursements and receipts in the budget for many years prior.

A surplus is when revenues exceed expenses. We had more money coming into the Treasury than was being paid out, and that money was used to pay off publicly traded bonds. The total amount if publicly traded debt fell. This is a fact.

Again, there must be hundreds of conservative economists out there willing to prove that there was no surplus. Please link some.

The government itself proves there was no surplus.

Cash accounting counts revenue when received, and expenses when they are paid. That would mean that, if revenue actually exceeded expenses, the debt would go down. That is a factual statement. It is also a factual statement that the debt has gone up every single year since Eisenhower was president.

People who don't understand how government accounting works look at total debt and assume that rising gross debt means there are deficits. You would fail an introductory finance course for making this assertion.

The cash flow statement for a corporation is similar to the way the government accounts for it's books. Government uses cash flow accounting while the cash flow statement reconciles cash inflows and outflows with accrual accounting. So they are similar. Likewise, comparing gross debt for the government is similar to comparing gross debt for a company. It doesn't matter much if you use cash or accrual accounting. So the analogy works.

People who think I do not understand accounting assume I am talking about something other than what I am saying.

The deficit increased every single year under Clinton. That is an immediate impact of the fact that revenues fell behind expenses every single year Clinton was president. I will admit that the budget Clinton submitted for 2000 contained a surplus, but that does not mean that additional spending bills were not authorized during that fiscal year that pushed the budget over the edge. Nor does it mean that revenue was as high as projected.

Clinton was the last president to submit a balanced, even surplus, budget, but the last actual surplus was under Eisenhower.

The government does NOT prove there was a deficit. If you go back and look at the budgets, they show that the government brought in more revenues than it spent. That is a surplus, full stop. It is not debatable.

Publicly traded debt of the US government fell in the last part of the 1990s. Why? Because the government generated more cash than it spent. Again, this is a fact. It is not debatable. If the amount of publicly traded debt has fallen, it means that the government is funding itself and using excess cash to pay down debt. That excess cash is a surplus. In fact, the CBO in the late 90s estimated that if the conditions at the time continued, the United States would retire all of it's publicly traded debt within a decade. This could not possibly have happened had the government been running deficits.

Net debt of the United States fell. Again, that is a fact and not debatable. This also could not have occurred had the government been running deficits.

And I will ask once again, since no one making this argument has done so yet. There must be hundreds of conservative economists who also acknowledge there was no surplus, since it seems obvious to conservative ideologues who aren't economists nor have much financial training. So link a few.

Let me Google that for you.

 

[PoliticalChic]

1. I hope that in the future you will avoid the prevarication [if I were a liberal, I would of course, say 'lie'] of the Clinton administration, and admit that there was no surplus.

I have enough accounting to also know that you are telling half of the story. You are accounting for Revenue in an "accrued fashion" and you are accounting for Spending on a "cash basis". I don't know if on an accrued basis we had a surplus or not because I have only seen half the data.

But enough of this BS. You seem at least reasonably intelligent so please quit wasting the thread talking about accounting methodology and address the obvious gaps to getting back to fiscal sanity.

1. Please learn how to provide correct attribution of quotes.

2. It should be enlightening, here, to explore accounting procedures…one of which is known as the Unified Cash Basis Budgeting. Just as with any one of us who writes a check, it is recorded as an expense, and when we receive a check, it is listed as income. Generally, government treats budgets in the same way.

a. So, a deficit means that the government spent more than it received during a specific fiscal year.

b. Now, think about this: using the cash basis method, you plan for a vacation in January by taking a $2,000 loan in December. This will appear as an asset in your bookkeeping- even though you will be obligated to repay this loan: it is actually a liability! This is exactly the situation that allowed Clinton to raid the Social Security Trust Fund, and claim this as revenue, even though it is an obligation to pay in the future.

3. Pluses for Clinton:
a) Defense spending fell by 2.2% of GDP,
b) Tax revenues rose by 2.6% of GDP, and
c) Net interest costs on the national debt dropped by 1% of GDP.

a. How much of the drop in defense spending should we attribute to the Reagan ‘peace dividend,’ the Soviet collapse?

4. The understanding of accounting is less of a concern for me than the kudos that Clinton receives for his smoke-and-mirrors use of economic data. If you choose to give him said credit, you should at least remember that he would not be in the position to claim the credit had President Reagan
a)not organized the Greenspan Social Securit Commission
and
b) won the Cold War.

5. As per your request:
Toward Fiscal Sanity, as discussed in Beck and Balfe, "Broke"-

1. The average federal employee earned $81,258 per year in 2009. The average private-sector worker earned $50,462. When benefits are added, the private-industry worker gets $10,500, while the federal employee gets $42,000- or more! Federal workers earning double their private counterparts - USATODAY.com

a. The disparity has grown from 66% in 2000, to 101% in 2009.
Federal Employees Continue to Prosper | Cato @ Liberty

b. When you compare job-to-job, which is difficult as job titles are hard to compare, total compensation for federal employees is 50% higher than private sector counterparts. Even considering skill, education, and seniority, it’s still a large disparity. USAToday, op.cit.

c. “An apples-to-apples comparison shows that the federal pay system gives many federal workers significantly more compensation than they would get in the private sector. The total premium costs taxpayers $40 billion (according to Richwine and Biggs) or $47 billion (Sherk) per year above market rates.” Federal Pay Still Inflated After Accounting for Skills | The Heritage Foundation

[see also http://universityandstate.wordpress...of-us-federal-government-civilian-employees/]

2. In addition to the lack of fairness, consider the effect on society if we incentivize government work as opposed to private work, and business creation…and the effect on innovation and productivity.

a. Traditionally, one could expect security from a government job, but lower pay. Now, since public employees have been allowed to unionize, we have public unions negotiating against the government, and using union funds to elect pro-union politicians.

3. The essential functions of the federal government would be national defense, courts, intellectual property and international relations. Add to this the mandatory costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, plus interest payments, subtracted from expected revenue, the government is in deficit.

4. George Washington had four cabinet departments. Since then we’ve added fourteen new departments, and reduced by two (Navy Department became part of Defense, and US Post Office became a quasi-corporation). How many are in line with constitutional requirements, and how many could be dispersed as state functions?

a. Department of Energy could be eliminated; President Carter created it to minimize our dependence on foreign oil, and to regulate oil prices. Good job? This department is tasked with maintaining and producing nuclear weapons. Why? What does the Pentagon do? And management of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve could, as Clinton suggested, become an outside entity. It also disperses ‘stimulus package’ funds. And it runs an appliance-rebate program, and ‘Weatherization Assistance Program,” and for this it received an additional $37 billion in ‘stimulus’ money, doubling its annual budget.

b. Department of Education is, of course, unconstitutional. The Constitution clearly states that powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states. So where is the impetus for its creation? Unions. The National Education Association (NEA) “In 1972, the massive union formed a political action committee…released ‘Needed: A Cabinet Department of Education’ in 1975, but its most significant step was to endorse a presidential candidate- Jimmy Carter- for the first time in the history of the organization.” D.T. Stallngs, “A Brief History of the Department of Education: 1979-2002,” p. 3. When formed, its budget was $13.1 billion (in 2007 dollars) and it employed 450 people. IN 2010, the estimated budget is $107 billion, and there are 4,800 employees. http://crunchycon.nationalreview.co...-department-education-not-radical/mona-charen “In November 1995, when the federal government shut down over a budget crisis, 89.4 percent of the department’s employees were deemed ‘nonessential’ and sent home.” Beck and Balfe, “Broke,” p.304

5. Any program that is currently federal could probably be handled better and cheaper by the states, figuring that local folks would keep a closer eye on the funds being spent…For example:

a. Federal housing programs should be completely disbanded, as they were the reason for the mortgage meltdown. And, clearly, the right to a home is not in the Constitution.

b. Federal highway and mass transit programs, budgeted at $41.3 billion in 2011. Eisenhower’s Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 was supposed to expire in 1972, “designed to create a national 41,250-mile highway system to be completed by 1969.” It has been expanded to 160,000 miles. The 18.4 cents federal fuel tax to fund the plan could be assumed by the states (I know, the Constitution gives the feds the power to establish ‘post roads’… can’t we assume that to have been done?). Federal Highway Funding | Downsizing the Federal Government

c. Keep Highway Spending within Our Means
Federal highway programs are funded not from general tax revenue but from various highway user taxes, mostly the federal tax on gasoline and diesel fuel. Legally, all those monies constitute the source of funding for the Highway Trust Fund. When Congress decides on spending for highways (and since the Reagan era, for mass transit), the dollars are supposed to come from this trust fund, says Robert Poole, director of transportation policy at the Reason Foundation.
The appropriations committees used to approve funding for those purposes that was less than the user-tax revenues coming in.
That meant federal revenues for surface transportation exceeded federal spending in that area, which made the overall budget deficit look smaller than it really was -- and was manifestly unfair to the highway users who were paying the bills.
So in the reauthorization bill before last (called TEA-21), Congress created a "firewall" around the Trust Fund.
The new provision guaranteed that annual highway and transit funding during the years of a reauthorization bill would equal the user-tax revenues coming in to the government each year. The way the existing rule works is that in a six-year reauthorization bill, Congress adopts an estimate of each year's highway user tax revenue. Based on that, it legally guarantees those same total annual amounts in highway and transit spending. It's this rule that the new House leadership proposes to scrap, says Poole.
Thanks to higher oil prices and the recession, those fuel-tax projections were wildly optimistic this decade, to the point where the "guaranteed" spending in the last two years was 40 percent more than the revenue.
That is why Congress has poured some $34 billion in general tax money into the Trust Fund over the past three years.
General funding of the Trust Fund undercuts the users-pay/users-benefit principle. It therefore opens the door to attempts by the White House and other interested parties to divert Highway Trust Fund money for other uses. This removes the link between users-pay and users-benefit, says Poole.
Source: Robert Poole, "Keep Highway Spending Within Our Means," Reason Foundation, January 3, 2011.
For text:
Reason Foundation - Out of Control Policy Blog > Keep Highway Spending Within Our Means


d. Federal agriculture subsidies are between $10 and $30 billion a year. This stems from the Depression, when farm families earned half of what the rest of the country earned. Today that is far from the case, and the subsidies primarily go to large operators and landowners- and celebrities. New light shed on farm subsidy payments - politics - msnbc.com

6. If you want a real eyeful of potential cuts that would save billions, …
a. The GAO says the federal government made at least $98 billion in ‘improper’ in 2009. White House reports $98B in improper government payments - Nov. 18, 2009
b. Federal auditors rated ever government program, and found that 22% of them, $123 billion in spending, were ineffective! 50 Examples of Government Waste | The Heritage Foundation
c. Did you know that the CBO reports a vast number of cuts that would save a fortune? http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10294/08-06-BudgetOptions.pdf Here are a few:
i. The CBO also considered the option of cutting the Airport Improvement Program that provides grants to airports to expand runways and improve security, saying this would reduce spending by $10.7 billion through 2019.
ii. The CBO also considered the option of cutting the Airport Improvement Program that provides grants to airports to expand runways and improve security, saying this would reduce spending by $10.7 billion through 2019.
iii. End subsidized loans to graduate students Ten year savings $18.8 billon
iv. End Department of Energy research on fossil fuels. Ten year savings $7.9 billion.

 

[Toro]

The government itself proves there was no surplus.

Cash accounting counts revenue when received, and expenses when they are paid. That would mean that, if revenue actually exceeded expenses, the debt would go down. That is a factual statement. It is also a factual statement that the debt has gone up every single year since Eisenhower was president.



People who think I do not understand accounting assume I am talking about something other than what I am saying.

The deficit increased every single year under Clinton. That is an immediate impact of the fact that revenues fell behind expenses every single year Clinton was president. I will admit that the budget Clinton submitted for 2000 contained a surplus, but that does not mean that additional spending bills were not authorized during that fiscal year that pushed the budget over the edge. Nor does it mean that revenue was as high as projected.

Clinton was the last president to submit a balanced, even surplus, budget, but the last actual surplus was under Eisenhower.

The government does NOT prove there was a deficit. If you go back and look at the budgets, they show that the government brought in more revenues than it spent. That is a surplus, full stop. It is not debatable.

Publicly traded debt of the US government fell in the last part of the 1990s. Why? Because the government generated more cash than it spent. Again, this is a fact. It is not debatable. If the amount of publicly traded debt has fallen, it means that the government is funding itself and using excess cash to pay down debt. That excess cash is a surplus. In fact, the CBO in the late 90s estimated that if the conditions at the time continued, the United States would retire all of it's publicly traded debt within a decade. This could not possibly have happened had the government been running deficits.

Net debt of the United States fell. Again, that is a fact and not debatable. This also could not have occurred had the government been running deficits.

And I will ask once again, since no one making this argument has done so yet. There must be hundreds of conservative economists who also acknowledge there was no surplus, since it seems obvious to conservative ideologues who aren't economists nor have much financial training. So link a few.

Let me Google that for you.

So the answer is "none" then. You should look at those links. None if them are economists or financial analysts. Most of them are blogs and forum posts of highly partisan conservative ideologues linking the Craig Steiner page, who BTW is a software engineer, not an economist nor a financial analyst.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

The government does NOT prove there was a deficit. If you go back and look at the budgets, they show that the government brought in more revenues than it spent. That is a surplus, full stop. It is not debatable.

Publicly traded debt of the US government fell in the last part of the 1990s. Why? Because the government generated more cash than it spent. Again, this is a fact. It is not debatable. If the amount of publicly traded debt has fallen, it means that the government is funding itself and using excess cash to pay down debt. That excess cash is a surplus. In fact, the CBO in the late 90s estimated that if the conditions at the time continued, the United States would retire all of it's publicly traded debt within a decade. This could not possibly have happened had the government been running deficits.

Net debt of the United States fell. Again, that is a fact and not debatable. This also could not have occurred had the government been running deficits.

And I will ask once again, since no one making this argument has done so yet. There must be hundreds of conservative economists who also acknowledge there was no surplus, since it seems obvious to conservative ideologues who aren't economists nor have much financial training. So link a few.

Let me Google that for you.

So the answer is "none" then. You should look at those links. None if them are economists or financial analysts. Most of them are blogs and forum posts of highly partisan conservative ideologues linking the Craig Steiner page, who BTW is a software engineer, not an economist nor a financial analyst.

It must be nice for you to look at a single link and dismiss everything as partisan.

 

[PoliticalChic]

Nope. We had included SS disbursements and receipts in the budget for many years prior.

A surplus is when revenues exceed expenses. We had more money coming into the Treasury than was being paid out, and that money was used to pay off publicly traded bonds. The total amount if publicly traded debt fell. This is a fact.

Again, there must be hundreds of conservative economists out there willing to prove that there was no surplus. Please link some.

The government itself proves there was no surplus.

Cash accounting counts revenue when received, and expenses when they are paid. That would mean that, if revenue actually exceeded expenses, the debt would go down. That is a factual statement. It is also a factual statement that the debt has gone up every single year since Eisenhower was president.

People who don't understand how government accounting works look at total debt and assume that rising gross debt means there are deficits. You would fail an introductory finance course for making this assertion.

The cash flow statement for a corporation is similar to the way the government accounts for it's books. Government uses cash flow accounting while the cash flow statement reconciles cash inflows and outflows with accrual accounting. So they are similar. Likewise, comparing gross debt for the government is similar to comparing gross debt for a company. It doesn't matter much if you use cash or accrual accounting. So the analogy works.

People who think I do not understand accounting assume I am talking about something other than what I am saying.

The deficit increased every single year under Clinton. That is an immediate impact of the fact that revenues fell behind expenses every single year Clinton was president. I will admit that the budget Clinton submitted for 2000 contained a surplus, but that does not mean that additional spending bills were not authorized during that fiscal year that pushed the budget over the edge. Nor does it mean that revenue was as high as projected.

Clinton was the last president to submit a balanced, even surplus, budget, but the last actual surplus was under Eisenhower.

The government does NOT prove there was a deficit. If you go back and look at the budgets, they show that the government brought in more revenues than it spent. That is a surplus, full stop. It is not debatable.

Publicly traded debt of the US government fell in the last part of the 1990s. Why? Because the government generated more cash than it spent. Again, this is a fact. It is not debatable. If the amount of publicly traded debt has fallen, it means that the government is funding itself and using excess cash to pay down debt. That excess cash is a surplus. In fact, the CBO in the late 90s estimated that if the conditions at the time continued, the United States would retire all of it's publicly traded debt within a decade. This could not possibly have happened had the government been running deficits.

Net debt of the United States fell. Again, that is a fact and not debatable. This also could not have occurred had the government been running deficits.

And I will ask once again, since no one making this argument has done so yet. There must be hundreds of conservative economists who also acknowledge there was no surplus, since it seems obvious to conservative ideologues who aren't economists nor have much financial training. So link a few.

"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


As can clearly be seen, in no year did the national debt go down, nor did Clinton leave President Bush with a surplus that Bush subsequently turned into a deficit. Yes, the deficit was almost eliminated in FY2000 (ending in September 2000 with a deficit of "only" $17.9 billion), but it never reached zero--let alone a positive surplus number. And Clinton's last budget proposal for FY2001, which ended in September 2001, generated a $133.29 billion deficit. The growing deficits started in the year of the last Clinton budget, not in the first year of the Bush administration."
The Myth of the Clinton Surplus

 

[Toro]

Let me Google that for you.

So the answer is "none" then. You should look at those links. None if them are economists or financial analysts. Most of them are blogs and forum posts of highly partisan conservative ideologues linking the Craig Steiner page, who BTW is a software engineer, not an economist nor a financial analyst.

It must be nice for you to look at a single link and dismiss everything as partisan.

I looked at most of those links on the first three pages. That's all there was. I didn't see any economist or financial analysts, even conservative ones. Post a few links from highly partisan conservative economists and financial analysts. That will do.

 

[Toro]

PC

Craig Steiner is a software engineer. Simply because he has a neat looking web page and posts a bunch of numbers does not mean he is knowledgable about the topic. If I want to know about software code for a mobile phone, I will ask a software engineer. If I want to know about how the government keeps it's books, I will ask a financial analyst or an economist. Can you find any making the same argument?