MikeyRavioli wrote:Maybe I am wrong, but I think Fuzz is a victim of fuzzy math.
Go to the U.S. Treasury website: http://www.ustreas.gov/
Click on "Bureaus": Takes you to http://www.ustreas.gov/bureaus/
Click on "Bureau of the Public Debt": Takes you to http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/
Scroll down to the section "The U.S. Public Debt" and click on "See the U.S. Public Debt to the Penny."
This takes you to the link http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
Verifying this is as simple as accessing the U.S. Treasury website where the national debt is updated daily and a history of the debt since January 1993 can be obtained. Considering the government's fiscal year ends on the last day of September each year, and considering Clinton's budget proposal in 1993 took effect in October 1993 and concluded September 1994 (FY1994), here's the national debt at the end of each year of Clinton Budgets:
Fiscal
Year Year
Ending National Debt
FY1993 09/30/1993 $4.411488 trillion
FY1994 09/30/1994 $4.692749 trillion
FY1995 09/29/1995 $4.973982 trillion
FY1996 09/30/1996 $5.224810 trillion
FY1997 09/30/1997 $5.413146 trillion
FY1998 09/30/1998 $5.526193 trillion
FY1999 09/30/1999 $5.656270 trillion
FY2000 09/29/2000 $5.674178 trillion
As can clearly be seen, in no year did the national debt go down, nor did Clinton leave President Bush with a surplus that Bush subsequently turned into a deficit.
End of the fiscal year numbers are good and fine. Interest is a bitch, especially on numbers that high. Here are a couple more dates and numbers.
03/30/2000 5,788,541,874,357.52
09/29/2000 5,674,178,209,886.86
A difference of 114 billion or so.
Clinton did pay down the debt, 3 years in a row. He was able to take in more revenue (taxes) then he spent and the economy was doing fine. That enabled his administration to at least start to pay down the debt.
Here's an interesting graph:
http://cedarcomm.com/~stevelm1/Revenue_v_Spending.png
10-1-93 4,406,339,573,433.47
10-31-01 5,815,983,290,402.24
Increase of 32%
10-31-01 5,815,983,290,402.24
9-30-09 11,909,829,003,511.75
Increase of 105%
So far under Obama it's increased 20%
