I can't imagine who you are referring to when you say "partisan asshole", but I've never denied if you look at total debt from a fiscal year basis, the year ending 9/30/00 increased 17 billion.
But "some folks and extreme partisan assholes refuse to acknowledge truth" which is that for the year ending 12/31/00, the total debt in fact decreased by $114 billion.
And of course every federal government agency says there was a budget surplus, as does most the media, unless you want to rely on a blog by a computer programmer for your position.
i am receptive to seeing your explanation for the increases in the federal deficit during the years clinton was claiming a budget surplus
Did you read through the thread? The Congressional Budget Office, or CBO is a bi-partisan Congressional office tasked with keeping budget records, including whether there is a surplus or deficit. The CBO is cited all the time by everyone for budget data. The stuff you hear today about Obama tripling the deficit this year comes from the CBO, for example. CBO records show without dispute there was a surplus in 2000 (and other years as well).
It was the CBO that said there were surpluses.
This was set out in the opening post. If the OP wasn't clear let me know and I'll explain it more clearly if I can.
it would seem, using basic math, that the national deficit would actually have declined over that period had there been an actual surplus
based on the fiscal year-end data, offered by dave and steiner and the federal government, there was no decline in the deficit. if the deficit increased it was only because a budget deficit - not a surplus - existed
what have i missed? i anticipate your explanation
What Dave and Steiner show you are not deficits, but the debt level.
A deficit is when expenditures exceed revenues in a given year. Clinton inhereted a $340 billion deficit from Bush1. The deficit decreased every year Clinton was president, until it became a surplus, which is when revenues exceed expenditures.
The deficit/surplus figures are published by the CBO. I gave the cite in the OP, I'll do it again here:
http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/100xx/doc10014/HistoricalMar09.xls
Table 1 has a column listing the "on-budget" and "total" surplus or deficit. These terms were defined in the OP. The numbers with a minus sign in front of them are deficits. You can see in 1999 and 2000, there was a surplus.
I personally put a lot more weight in the bi-partisan CBO than a blog by a computer programmer. But if you think that blog is a better source than the CBO; not much I can do about that.
and a brief tangent on another approach you have taken. 12/31/XX data is not meaningful for an organization which has a year end of 09/30/XX. the 12/31 data is referred to as interim data by those who analyze financial information; the analysts would find interim data to be much less reliable than year-end data. the federal government operates its fiscal year from 10/01 thru 09/30, thus causing 12/31 information to be questionable ... certainly more so than that provided for fiscal year end
when you compare apples to oranges the result is fruit salad. so let me ask you to explain the discrepancy of data using fiscal year end data ... for accurate comparison and because i am not in the mood for fruit salad
Treasury debt data is not referred to by any Govt agency, or the media in general, or just about anyone except Diamond Dave and the programmer's blog that I have seen, to officially define whether there is a deficit or surplus.
For example, I'm sure you've heard about Obama tripling the deficit, right? His deficit is projected to be around $1.8 trillion, and that would mean the deficit for 2008 would have to be around $600 billion, right?
But if we use the Treasury debt data as you've described, the "deficit" in 2008 was over one trillion dollars. In that case, everyone would be wrong to claim that Obama is tripling the deficit. But no one uses debt data to measure budget deficits or surpluses.
That is probably because the debt information measures borrowing, not spending and revenues, and the debt data may not necessarily reflect what the government spends or collects. For example, the Treasury borrowed over $1 trillion for the year ending 9/30/08, much of it to fund the bailout, but that doesn't mean the Govt had spent it all in that in that time frame to say it should be included in the calculation of a deficit.
But if you want to look at the debt, to see if the Govt is borrowing more money or less to gauge if it is operating with a "surplus" or "deficit" there is no particular reason why you would only have to look at a fiscal year ending 9/30. The Treasury is borrowing money all year long based on need. You could look at any year end date to measure whether the Govt had to borrow more or not in that time period if you want to use that as a gauge to measure the deficit or surplus.
What the debt data is showing is that the Govt was needing to borrow less and less money during Clinton's term. For the year ending 9/30/99, the Govt had to borrow and additional $130 billion compared to the previous year. For the year ending 9/30/00, it only had to borrow $17 billion more. This reflects that the Govt is spending less compared to revenues - ie deficits are shrinking if we use this as a measure. And for the year ending 12/31/00, just before Bush took office, the Govt actually paid down the debt by $114 billion, showing that during that time period, it was taking in more revenue than it was spending -- which under the test you described, shows a surplus during that time period.
So either way you look at it -- whether referring to budget data maintained by the CBO, or looking at whether for a given year the government had to borrow more money, there was a surplus during Clinton's term.
