Because 2008 has come to an end I am getting my financial house in order and creating my budget for 2009 and with our nations economy and our industry in turmoil for the past 2 years - 3 if you lived in Michigan like I did, my income and assets have taken a beating while my debts have risen far greater than I ever could have imagined.
The US National Public Debt has soared to more than 10 Trillion Dollars and I am more than a little concerned and you should be too. In addition to 1/2 Trillion dollars our fearless leaders in both executive and legislative branches of our government (Democrats & Republicans both are to blame) have borrowed since the new fiscal year began in October they have also guaranteed an additional 7 Trillion Dollars in loans for private sector.
Inflaming the issue is that you cant discuss it anywhere whether it be here, in congress or your local pub over a beer without a Democrat claiming that this Republican president had a surplus when he took office and that this is all his fault. Let me be clear, this isn't a partisan issue, this is an American issue so I don't want to hear from people blaming Republicans or Democrats because if you make those comments they will be deleted from this thread, period. I have written this post because our way of life is dangerously close to collapsing upon itself as a result of this debt. And this is a national security threat like terrorism, border security and the like because a weak fiancial house will bring down any nation just like it will bring down your family and mine if we aren't fiscally responsible!
What will One Trillion Dollars Buy?
For posterity you and I can't get our heads around those numbers because no one except for the US Gov't uses numbers that big but let me share with you what 10 Trillion dollars looks like written out;
$10,586,589,075,929.34
OK -
now that we know the Total Public Debt is 10.5 Trillion what will it buy you?
According to Andrew Davis, Libertarian Party;
One trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000) is enough money:
To buy everybody living in Los Angeles at least one Lamborghini Gallardo.
To buy 88,052, 394' custom mega yachts; enough to stretch around ¼ of the world.
To buy everyone living in Belize and Malta a Manhattan apartment.
To get half of the Democratic Party into a fundraiser for Barack Obama at the $28,500 admission price.
To give one out of every two men in the United States a Men’s Presidential Rolex watch.
To buy every woman in the United States a Tiffany Diamond Starfish Pendant.
To get two Mitsubishi 73? HDTVs for every household in America.
To buy four copies of The Office: Season Four on DVD, to every person on earth.
To send everybody in America on an all-inclusive vacation to Tahiti (and some people can stay a few extra days).
$1 trillion is enough money for everyone in Buffalo, NY to buy their own 65-acre island in Panama.
This is how much the government is going to cost you (roughly $3,278 for every man, woman and child in the United States) so multiply that by 10.5 and there you have it, its an enormous sum of money to to anything with.
Where was the surplus?
The claim was made by Clinton himself that his administration had a surplus of $69 billion in FY1998, $123 billion in FY1999 and $230 billion in FY2000 
. In that same link, Clinton claimed that the national debt had been reduced by $360 billion in the last three years, presumably FY1998, FY1999, and FY2000 however no matter how you add it, $360 billion is not the sum of the alleged surpluses of the three years in question ($69B + $123B + $230B = $422B, not $360B).
I am not defending the increase of the federal debt under President Bush, but it is disingenuous at the very least to say of promoting Clinton's record as having generated a surplus. It never happened. There was never a surplus and the cold hard facts support that statement. In fact, far from a $360 billion reduction in the national debt in FY1998-FY2000, there was an increase of $281 billion and so there is a gap in those numbers is 600 Billion Dollars!
You can verify these figures by 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.
Because the government's fiscal year ends on the last day of September each year, and because 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 |
Deficit |
| FY1993 |
09/30/1993 |
$4.411488 trillion |
|
| FY1994 |
09/30/1994 |
$4.692749 trillion |
$281.26 billion |
| FY1995 |
09/29/1995 |
$4.973982 trillion |
$281.23 billion |
| FY1996 |
09/30/1996 |
$5.224810 trillion |
$250.83 billion |
| FY1997 |
09/30/1997 |
$5.413146 trillion |
$188.34 billion |
| FY1998 |
09/30/1998 |
$5.526193 trillion |
$113.05 billion |
| FY1999 |
09/30/1999 |
$5.656270 trillion |
$130.08 billion |
| FY2000 |
09/29/2000 |
$5.674178 trillion |
$17.91 billion |
| FY2001 |
09/28/2001 |
$5.807463 trillion |
$133.29 billion |
As you can see, not once during the Clinton Administration did the national debt go down, nor did Clinton leave President Bush with a budget surplus that he spent at a frat party kegger. Yes, the budget was almost balanced in FY2000 (ending in September 2000 with a deficit of "only" $17.9 billion), but it never reached zero--let alone a positive number. Clinton's last budget proposal for FY2001, which ended in September 2001, generated a $133.29 billion deficit. The growing deficits started in the year of the last Clinton budget, not in the first year of the Bush administration.
President Bush assumed the office of presidency January 2001 and his first budget took effect October 1, 2001 for the year ending September 30, 2002 (FY2002). Therefore the $133.29 billion deficit in the year ending September 2001 was Clinton's. To be fair to Clinton, Bush supported a tax refund where taxpayers received checks in 2001 the cost was $38 billion, So even if we assume that $38 billion of the FY2001 deficit was due to Bush's tax refunds and not part of Clinton's last budget, that still means that Clinton's last budget produced a deficit of 133.29 - 38 = $95.29 billion.
Clinton did not achieve a surplus and he didn't leave President Bush with a surplus. Only in Washington can you use these accounting principles and not be convicted of accounting fraud under Sarbanes- Oxley aka; also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002. Just ask Bernie Evers from World Com and his buddies from Enron and Tyco!
Where was the Myth Started?
That is very easy to answer; Bill Clinton himself;
President Clinton announces another record budget surplus
From CNN White House Correspondent Kelly Wallace
September 27, 2000
Web posted at: 4:51 p.m. EDT (2051 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget
surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S.
history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion.
WHY WOULD A POLITICIAN LIE ABOUT HIS ACHIEVEMENTS?
The reasons are limitless but it could be as simple as why anyone lies on their resumes; to artificially inflate their successes. Either way the point is moot because he categorically lied and to make matters worse, no one in the media challenged it and it was clear from this statement that he was endorsing the Vice President in his bid for the presidency and eveidently so was the media, even way back in 2000.
HOW DID HE LIE?
Stay with me because this is where it gets bold; He did it with Washington doublespeak and half truths. To understand what happened requires you to know what makes up the national debt.
The national debt is made up of public debt and intergovernmental holdings.
The public debt is debt held by the public, normally including things such as treasury bills, savings bonds, and other instruments the public can purchase from the government.
Intergovernmental holdings, on the other hand, is when the government borrows money from itself--mostly borrowing money from social security.
The national debt and the bogus surpluses for the last 4 Clinton fiscal years gives the following table:
Fiscal
Year |
End
Date |
Claimed
Surplus |
Public
Debt |
Inter-gov
Holdings |
Total National
Debt |
| FY1997 |
09/30/1997 |
|
$3.789667T |
$1.623478T |
$5.413146T |
| FY1998 |
09/30/1998 |
$69.2B |
$3.733864T  $55.8B |
$1.792328T  $168.9B |
$5.526193T $113B |
| FY1999 |
09/30/1999 |
$122.7B |
$3.636104T $97.8B |
$2.020166T $227.8B |
$5.656270T $130.1B |
| FY2000 |
09/29/2000 |
$230.0B |
$3.405303T $230.8B |
$2.268874T $248.7B |
$5.674178T $17.9B |
| FY2001 |
09/28/2001 |
|
$3.339310T $66.0B |
$2.468153T $199.3B |
$5.807463T $133.3B |
While the public debt went down in each of those four years, the intergovernmental holdings went up each year by a far greater amount--and, in turn, the total national debt (which is public debt + intergovernmental holdings) went up. Therein lies the lie.
When Clinton (and others) said that he had paid down the national debt, he was lying. As you can see the national debt went up every single year. What Clinton did do was pay down the public debt--notice that the claimed surplus is relatively close to the decrease in the public debt for those years. But he paid down the public
debt by borrowing far more money in the form of intergovernmental holdings while still running budget deficits year after year!
Most likely it was not even a conscious decision by Clinton to lie or take credit for reduction of the Public Debt because the Social Security Administration is legally required to take all surpluses and buy U.S. Government securities which automatically and immediately become intergovernmental holdings. Because the economy was doing well due to the dot-com bubble and people were earning a lot of money and paying a lot into Social Security more money was coming in than it had to pay in benefits to retired persons, all that extra money was used to buy U.S. Government securities. The government was still running deficits, but since there was so much money coming from excess Social Security contributions there was no need to borrow more money directly from the public. As such, the public debt went down while intergovernmental holdings continued to skyrocket.
The net effect was that the national debt most definitely did not get paid down because we did not have a surplus. The government just covered its
deficit by borrowing money from Social Security rather than the public. But do
not forget that Social Security will begin cashing in those notes in 2017 in
order to fund promises made to baby-boomers and then those
intergovernmental-debts are going to come due in a very big way.
Let's Recap;
There was no
Surplus - it was all a lie made up to put a nice bow on the administration of the outgoing impeached president whose administration was rife with personal scandal in order to make it appear better than it really was and to encourage you to vote for his Veep for president and that is evidenced in the same statement below;
"Like our Olympic athletes in Sydney, the American people are breaking all kinds of records these days. This is the first year we've balanced the budget without using the Medicare trust fund since Medicare was created in 1965. I think we should follow Al Gore's advice and lock those trust funds away for the future,"
OK so now that we know he
lied about the budget where do we go from here? Since then the national debt has skyrocketed, like it or not due to two wars, unprecedented expansion of the federal government in reposnse to 9/11 and stunning government bailouts of Private sector businesses that probably won't post a profit for years as a result. The answer is simple;
A Balance transfer from one
credit card to another doesn't equal debt reduction it just means you owe
someone different.
Just say no to more entitlement and government
bailout.
Cut taxes across the
board to stimulate capital investment and put people to work.
And for heavens sake stop claiming that
there was a surplus of any type when Clinton left office but it is patently
false!
Sources &
Citations;
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=nphttp://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus/http://rinf.com/alt-news/contributions/the-list-what-a-trillion-dollars-will-buy/4651/ http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16
Stumble It!;)
;)
Ricardo, I am featuring this one in Silent Majority and I haven't even read it yet I just know this one will be fun