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so if you don't believe in bush's or obama's spendulus plan, you're partisan...
more lameness
so if you don't believe in bush's or obama's spendulus plan, you're partisan...
more lameness
that would describe most of the lame bunch.
What do you think the Bush deficit will be when FY 2009 is over? You agree that 2009 is Bush's year, right, just like you claim 2001 was Clinton's year?
Or do the rules change when they are applied to Democrats?
so if you don't believe in bush's or obama's spendulus plan, you're partisan...
more lameness
that would describe most of the lame bunch.
What do you think the Bush deficit will be when FY 2009 is over? You agree that 2009 is Bush's year, right, just like you claim 2001 was Clinton's year?
Or do the rules change when they are applied to Democrats?
you're an asshole...
so if you don't believe in bush's or obama's spendulus plan, you're partisan...
more lameness
that would describe most of the lame bunch.
What do you think the Bush deficit will be when FY 2009 is over? You agree that 2009 is Bush's year, right, just like you claim 2001 was Clinton's year?
Or do the rules change when they are applied to Democrats?
you're an asshole...
that would describe most of the lame bunch.
What do you think the Bush deficit will be when FY 2009 is over? You agree that 2009 is Bush's year, right, just like you claim 2001 was Clinton's year?
Or do the rules change when they are applied to Democrats?
you're an asshole...
I don't know why it is so hard for the asshole to accept that the fiscal year budget for this year is Bush's, but any ADDITIONAL off-budget spending is on Obama... just as it was with other Presidents in their first term...
The rules don't change.. unless with someone like irefag, when it only changes when the partisan buffoon believes it benefits his party
Duck and hide... duck and hide... duck away from facts, and hide from reality
No surplus since 1957, no total debt reduction since 1961.. and yes, intergovernmental spending/borrowing is part of total governmental spending accountability and shows the myth of the surplus
Toro.. a budget surplus is what was claimed and confirmed.. however, it does not take into account all spending by the govt and dipping into other cash pools... the taxes collected for SS are not something the government is supposed to use (except in case of emergency) for it's normal spending
So while the govt DID take in more, it borrowed from an area it was not supposed to, causing intergovernmental debt, because the SS fund is to be paid back...
As stated... it's like saying I spent within budget (spent less than I earned in my reported budget), but borrowed from my kid's college fund to pay for some tings off of my 'official' budget
As for WHY it would do such a thing... hmm.. many reasons... perpetrating a myth like we have now... for not borrowing and being accounted for the normal way.. etc
And as for the numbers.. it is there in the books for the SSA
And our outstanding debt, never, and I do mean never went down during Clinton's term.. the last time we had a smaller outstanding total debt was 1961 under Kennedy, though because of paying down the debt we actually did not run a surplus.. the last time we ran a true surplus (including budget and intergovernmental spending) was 1957
Our liabilities have not gone down, nor will they go down until we fix social security and medicare.
However, you have stated that the Clinton administration borrowed from social security - which would require that the the trust fund collapse non-redeemable government bonds and credit its accounts but not receive actual cash to disburse - to fund its deficits. Here are the accounts of social security. Please show me where this happened. I would truly be interested in seeing this. So far, I don't see any evidence of it, though I'd be more than happy to admit it is the case if you can show me.
Trust Fund Data
Monthly treasury statements show it clearly.... about 250 BIL from 2000 alone that were a result of 'borrowing' from governmental trust funds including SS, Military Retirement fund and even of all things the unemployment fund... and more...
On the 'budget' is where Clinton reported and bragged about his mythical surplus.. it is the off budget expenditures, funded by the governmental trust funds, where the lie is caught.. and it is held within the intergovernmental spending records shown so many times before
It was a game of smoke and mirrors.. that blind partisans preach like gospel, and that many other overlook...
"When an actual budget surplus occurs, the annual excess funds are
then used to reduce debt held by the public."
Right from http://www.treasurydirect.gov/govt/reports/pd/feddebt/feddebt_ann2000.pdf.. .a blatant misdirection... because our total debt is not just the debt held by the people, but by the government as well... as stated, like borrowing from your kids college fund for your cosmetic surgery, and saying you were still on budget because your 'official' budget was less than your salary income
Social Security and other governmental trust funds are not part of the President's budget
http://fms.treas.gov/mts/mts0900.pdf
You look close enough and you find more and more (the more you look) funky ways the Prez (And NO, not just Clinton) hid crap and gave misleading numbers
And please not to the person above... It has been well documented that I NEVER claimed Bush to be better on spending or on reporting accurately... this is PURELY about the myth of the Clinton Surplus
About the expected response.
It's fine to say 2001 was Clinton's year, but say the same thing about 2009 and Bush and "you're an asshole."
Rank partisanship.
you lying sack of meadomuffins...i NEVER said that
you replied to the post where i said that part of 2009 is bush's budget so you know full well i have NOT said what you are claiming i said. you're just making stuff up you partisan hack
toro:
thanks. manu raised the the issue i was thinking. so a surplus is only bringing in more tax revenue than what is spent? how then does the deficit grow bigger in the same year? or did the deficit go down in 2000? what about the year 2001...was there a surplus? i'm talking about the fiscal year, to the year bush got sworn in, was still clinton's budget year.
dude, you said i did not say that about bush, you implied that i said it for clinton but did not hold it true for bush...that is a lie... you're so desperate you had to make up stuff about me...its humorous you think i was talking about never saying clinton's budget....loool, you're such a liar you can't keep up with reality
and fuck you for the rep...you are a lousy hypocrite, you whine when others insult but have no problem saying "you're the fucking liar"...
NEW YORK June 23, 2009 (MarketWatch) -- On Wall and Main streets they call William Jefferson Clinton the "comeback kid," but it's not because of some election-day surprise.
It's because most everything he did regarding financial services regulation has come back to haunt us.
If it wasn't apparent before, the former president's handiwork became clear last week when President Obama announced sweeping financial services reform. The plan's efforts to bring fair dealing to the mortgage markets, rules to the derivative marketplace and restraint to big financial firms underscored the missteps of the second Clinton term.
That's because we had weakly regulated markets when Clinton took office. When he left, they were an invitation to lawless dealing where, for the ease of it, Willie Sutton would have traded his gun and mask for a briefcase and necktie.
During his final three years in office, Clinton created a fertile environment for home-lending charlatans, hiding places for Wall Street swindlers and a regulatory structure that had served the financial marketplace so well for more than six decades.
Clinton bashing -- like Bush bashing -- is often a cop out, but he made some critical mistakes when it came to dealing with the financial industry. Three poor decisions stand out.
The first was a change in 1997 to the amount of taxes a homeowner had to pay on the sale of his or her home on up to $500,000. This change effectively made buying and selling a home for profit the most compelling investment in America by tax standards. It changed our housing market from one of supply and demand to one of rampant speculation.
The second mistake was one of inaction. In 1998, Long-Term Capital Management's use of derivatives and leverage required a massive $3.6 billion hedge fund bailout organized by the New York Federal Reserve Bank. After the fiasco rocked the markets, the administration was on the spot. Would it require tighter regulation of this new form of investment vehicle? Would it rein in the derivatives markets?
Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin counseled against it to varying degrees and Clinton relented.
Repeal of Glass-Steagall
But perhaps the biggest mistake of the Clinton years regarding Wall Street and the one that rings loudest today was the repeal of Glass-Steagall, a 1933 law that effectively split investment banking and brokerages from commercial banks.
In the years leading up to the repeal, Wall Street had been grumbling that the law had become an anachronism. Financial technology was sophisticated. We were so much smarter than they were back in 1929 that there was no way a financial services conglomerate could pose a threat to the system, Wall Street experts said. Besides, they argued, it was a good idea for a bank to handle customers' investments and savings as a hedge in the bad times.
The Clinton administration effectively had its hand forced in 1998 by the merger of Citicorp and Travelers Group in 1998. The creation of Citigroup Inc. required a lot of chutzpah by its CEO, Sandy Weill, because it was effectively prohibited under Glass-Steagall.
Enter the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, which not only allowed Citi to exist but also eliminated key barriers between bankers who are supposed to limit risks and investment bankers who were supposed to take them.
The biggest argument critics have against bringing back Glass-Steagall is that it would be too chaotic. Whole companies would have to be cleaved. Relationships would have to be unwound.
Well, back in 1933 the law effectively split J.P. Morgan , the bank, from what would become Morgan Stanley, the brokerage. Both seem to have come through the disruption fairly well.
Aides who abetted
Clinton didn't do it all alone. He had a lot of help from Congress. He was under pressure from a legislature controlled by laissez-faire Republicans who were hell bent on taking up the Reagan ideology of deregulation and free markets. The repeal of Glass-Steagall passed 90-8 in the Senate and 362-57 in the House.
Greenspan, the universally loved chairman of the Federal Reserve, gave everyone bad advice in regard to interest rates, home ownership and derivatives. Under Levitt at the SEC, Wall Street accounting reached its nadir only to reveal itself with WorldCom and Enron after he left office.
Then, Clinton's Republican successor closed the deal. George W. Bush took the ball into the end zone, and making buying a home easier than spelling FNMA or FICO and removing the last vestiges of capital requirements at U.S. brokerage firms.
Ultimately, however, the big bang -- the wall torn down between brokers and banks -- happened on Clinton's watch. It's largely the problem that's being tackled in the current administration's 85-page white paper on reform. After all, Citigroup's banking side probably would not have loaded its balance sheet with toxic loans had it not been under pressure from the arm making all of the stuff.
Citi also wouldn't be the size it is today, a monster that the government deems "too big to fail" and required more than $300 billion in cash and guarantees to stabilize.
Citigroup's drag on the nation probably isn't what Clinton envisioned, but that's the problem with modernizing markets and making our financial system cutting edge. Too often we get cut.
Ever since I started posting here, I've seen in a number of threads with posts from a number of different people who claim that the budget surplus during the Clinton administration was a "myth," and that in fact there was no surplus.
The "fact" that there was no surplus under Clinton has been "proved" here "over and over and over" according to some like DiamondDave, who as of late taken to neg repping me for even asserting otherwise.
I don't know who was debating this point before I got here, but if it was "proved" over and over that a surplus under Clinton was a "myth" they weren't very knowledgeable. Or they get their information for the Murdoch "news" outlets.
So this thread is to settle the matter once and for all.
Those who claim that the surplus during the Clinton administration was a "myth" can use this opportunity to prove me wrong. And since it apparently has been proved "over and over and over" again to have been a myth it shouldn't be too hard to prove it one more time.
+++
Here' *my* proof that there was in fact a surplus:
The Congressional Budget Office is a non-partisan office that keeps budget records for Congress. You can see CBO reports on historical actual budget information in its website here:
http://cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9957/...bles09-web.XLS
Table 1 reports summary budget information, including two measures of the deficit (or surplus). "Total" includes SS surplus tax receipts (and has commonly been used by the Bush administration to measure deficits), and "on-budget" does not (and is therefore the more accurate measure, IMO, since SS taxes are not supposed to be used for general Govt expenditures). Because SS taxes have produced a surplus (about $200 billion) the last couple years, the on-budget surplus is lower than the "total" surplus (and conversely, the on-budget deficit is greater than the "total" deficit).
Follow the table down to the year "2000" and in the third column you can find that the "on-budget" surplus for 2000 was $86.4 billion. In 1999, there was a $1.9 billion surplus. You can see in the next column that the "total" surplus figures are even larger.
The U.S. budget does not include every expenditure -- for example, it has (prior to Obama taking office excludes "non-permanent" expenditures like the Iraq war. By excluding such things, the Bush administration was able to make the deficits look less severe. In 2006 and 2007, for example, the Bush administration claimed deficits of significantly less than $500 billion, while the US Govt actually had to borrow more than $500 billion in each of those years.
So looking at actual borrowing of the US Govt gives another picture of the deficit. For example, last year, the Govt borrowed over a trillion dollars, which is one way of measuring the size of the deficit Obama inhereted.
Did Clinton have a surplus using this measurement?
You can access the total debt of the US Govt from the Treasury Department's website, here:
Debt to the Penny (Daily History Search Application)
Total debt of the US Government:
12/31/1999 $5,776,091,314,225.33
12/29/2000 $5,662,216,013,697.37
The total debt of the US Govt decreased by $114 billion during 2000, Clinton's last year in office.
Showing a true surplus.
+++
So to DiamondDave or anyone else who claims the surplus under Clinton was a "myth," here's a chance to present the "proof" that has been shown "over and over and over" that this surplus is a just a "myth".
So I finally stopped being so lazy and went through the Treasury document that Dave posted here. This is the last monthly Treasury statement of the 2000 fiscal year.
On page 3, it details the actual cash that comes in and out of the Treasury. In FY2000, total on-balance and off-balance sheet revenues was $2.025 trillion. This is cash that has come into the government. Total on-balance and off-balance sheet outlays was $1.788 trillion. This is the cash the government actually spent. This is the budget of the United States. The Treasury states that the government ran a surplus of $237 billion. This is the operating budget of the United States federal government. $2.025 trillion in cash came in, $1.788 trillion of cash went out. The government ran a cash surplus.
The government, however, saw an increase in total debt. You can see how this happens in Table 6 on page 20. Where it says "Total federal securities," you can see that total debt rose $22.9 billion from $5.606 trillion to $5.629 trillion. How can this happen when there is a surplus in the budget?
You can see just down the balance sheet where it says "Net federal securities held as investments of government accounts." It rose from $1.973 trillion to $2.218 trillion, primarily because "Federal securities held as investments of government accounts" rose. This is debt the government owes itself. The government issues this debt to fund various agencies and obligations. You can see the break-down of this in Schedule D on page 24.
Most of these liabilities are for various trust funds, social security being the best well known. The obligations for social security rose from $762 billion to $893 billion, a 17% increase. In total, trust fund obligations rose from $1,989 trillion to $2.235 trillion, a 12% increase.
Now, a 12% in total fund obligations and a 17% increase in social security are a very large amounts. Why did it go up so high? Frankly, I have no idea. I could dig further, but I am about to go cycling and want to get out of here. However, just as a guide, revenues rose 10% and spending rose 5%. Real economic growth was under 4%. Thus, trust fund liabilities accelerated at a very fast rate, much faster than typical actuarial assumptions.
Now, it is important to understand that this is not additional money that was spent. The government did not borrow and spend this money. Instead, these accounts are liabilities the government owes itself in the future. And given the rapid increase in liabilities, it appears that something occurred outside the normal realm of operations. Possibly, the government accelerated investments because they were able to get the operating budget into surplus. Total social security cash receipts in the fiscal year was $620 billion. Total social security cash outlays was $442 billion.
So I would conclude that Clinton ran a surplus. But that is not particularly ground-breaking. Most people in-the-know have made the same conclusion.
It is also important to understand that Social Security is not fully funded. If Social Security had been fully funded, the budget surplus would have been even greater because either tax receipts would be higher or benefits paid out would be lower.
