The only reason that Clinton "eliminated" yearly deficits is because he raided the social security trust fund and other sources to "balance" his budget.
1.All Presidents use social security surpluses towards the current budget 2.I don't know if its true are not but many sources I read such as the one from fact check that I posted above says the the budget would have still been balanced even if SS wasn't used Clintonâs large budget surpluses also owe much to the Social Security tax on payrolls. Social Security taxes now bring in more than the cost of current benefits, and the "Social Security surplus" makes the total deficit or surplus figures look better than they would if Social Security wasnât counted. But even if we remove Social Security from the equation, there was a surplus of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999 and $86.4 billion in fiscal 2000. So any way you count it, the federal budget was balanced and the deficit was erased, if only for a while.
Which should I believe -- the Enron accounting of the CBO or the simple statements of our outstanding debt put out by the U.S. Department of the Treasury? If we had balanced budgets then why did we have to keep borrowing more money every year? If I had debt of $100,000 last year and debt of $120,000 this year would you say that I had balanced my budget?