Didn't we have a HUGE surplus of cash when Clinton left office? Don't we have a HUGE DEFECIT now with Bush?

Question

Does anyone know what the numbers are?

Please, just facts, no hypersensitive, defensive chat.

Answer 1

Clinton should have spent a little more cash trying to get Bin Laden instead of hording it.

Answer 2

Kayla, your confusing government SURPLUS and government DEBT.

SURPLUS and DEFECIT refer to the difference between revenues and expenses for a single year.

Since the Revolutionary War, this country has carried DEBT which is the TOTAL amount we owe to creditors in things like bonds. A SURPLUS subtracts from that debt, a DEFECIT adds to it.

Answer 3

We didn't have a surplus.  We had a -prospective- surplus, in other words we were on the way to a balanced budget.  Clinton is the only president I can remember who actually did make government smaller, cut spending, and cut taxes for the middle class (Reagan's famous tax reform actually raised taxes for the middle class).

When Bush came into office he couldn't wait to undo all of Clinton's work.  He immediately gave a tax cut, mostly for the rich, saying that we had enough to both give a tax cut -and- balance the budget.  But his budget deficits have been the biggest in history NOT COUNTING the Iraq War.

Answer 4

Bill Clinton had a budget surplus of $559 billion.

Okay, it seems most sites agree that the surplus was $230 billion.

The White House website reports that Clinton ended his second term with "the first balanced budget in decades and achieved a budget surplus." Now, this is not Clinton's personal White House page, this is a biography found on George W. Bush's White House site. They do not, however, report how much the surplus was.

Source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presid...

Here are a couple other sources of exactly how much the surplus was:

Surplus: $230 billion

Source: http://clinton4.nara.gov/WH/Work/Wed_Sep...

Surplus: $230 billion

Source: http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS...

Surplus: $559 billion

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinto...

As far as Bush's debt, it literally grows by the second. There is a debt clock at this website: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/

Right this second, it stands at $9,529,722,490,149.32.