Um...you didn't know that interest is an expense? Read any company's annual report. You just admitted the surplus was a lie.
ROFLMNAO!
So a trillion dollars in public debt was paid down, despite the government never having realized budget surpluses anywhere NEAR a trillion dollars?
Now since government has no other means of paying down debt, beyond the spending of less money than for which they have budgeted, given that to tax beyond that which is required to run the government is the definition of tyranny, I wonder how it could be that the US Federal Government came up with a trillion extra dollars, which it did not borrow, thus which would axiomatically increase the debt, by an equal amount?