1. Clinton was LUCKY at catching tax revenues from capital gains at the top of the tech bubble. To project such things forward as an "anticipated surplus" is idiocy. For the public to accept it as fact is even more stupid. 2. Clinton RAISED taxes. Anybody could balance the budget if they raised taxes enough. BTW.. Just because Clinton was a POS, don't think I'm a fan of RepubliClowns. Bad as Clinton was, Bush has been unimaginably worse.
Try this article, it gives a different viewpoint from what I originally learned. http://www.letxa.com/articles/16 Regarding the full budget, which includes future Medicare & S.S. liabilities, Clinton just put those away into the footnotes. There never was a surplus, there never is one and never will be since there are so many liabilities outstanding. Baby Boomer retiring is a scary projection, because there is no money to cover them, regardless of the lies Washington told the public when instituting these programs.
That was a nice read. Interesting how it points heavily to account deficits being a large issue -- this paper is clearly scattered and not really in-depth enough to give fair treatment to the subject (the correlations between index values and previous crisises leave a lot to be desired.. the methodologies of quantifying and qualifying previous crises against the current one leave a lot to be explained and even desired). If anything though, it makes me realize WHEN the next recovery does happen, IF its a response of trade accounts rebalancing, then I'd rather put my $$$ into US small caps and avoid international (a reversion means that intl' consumers are buying our goods, we aren't importing oil nor chinese goods). Those are two big WHENs and IFs, though. Maybe not the next cycle... perhaps the one after?
There is was good $100B/year savings in the defense budget which Clinton did not avail. Russians were spent, Gulf War proved that US military was atleast a decade ahead of any top five 'other' nations combined. Clinton did not lift sanctions on Iraq which resulted in 2 million people destroyed and final result was AQ and Islamic fanatism came on rise. 911 happened and US lost 500B in economic and stock market values. Back to war in Iraq and 10-20B a month and already $1 Trillion blown up and still no end in sight. The moral of the story is ???????????????? Any views
Y'all have figured out I'm a doomer, so I appreciate your first point and agree with it completely. Well put - you have to understand this. Most people don't realize that big things fall apart SLOWLY and things get better too. While we might find our elected leaders to be lacking in horsepower, the appointed ones are certainly not.
the fact you believe it does not bode well for the value of your opinion. Clinton tripped over a rosy scenario economy. If he had presided for 8 more years, the difference today would have been minimal. You somehow think Democrats stand for cutting the cost of government? They try to increase spending at every opportunity. The SS mess originated with a Democrat (FDR). Not that any of this means the Republicans are any better
That's the part of "tax and spend" the Republicans don't seem to understand. For the last seven years it's been "spend and spend". We are beginning to see that deficits really do matter.
You're right. "Borrow and Spend" will get us to the same destination... just a slightly different path. It's unconscionable that "automatic deficits" are part of the budget. And Bush wants to "make the tax cuts permanent". WHAT? Is he NUTS? And unfortunately we can't just think along the lines, "Bush is TERRIBLE", => "RepubliClowns are bad" => "Therefore vote for Obama or YoMama". The thought of either of those two in the White House makes we wanna PUKE! And for all you ETers who read this... It's not that Bush and Bennie are stupid. They're not. They are, unfortunately, GREEDY. Negligently and even criminally GREEDY. And the DemoCraps are equally so. We as Americans cannot afford to have ANY of the front-running candidates win the election. Regardless of who wins, all we're going to get is different lipstick on the pig.