Does anyone know the national surplus at the end of (Bill) Clinton's term?

Question

Even just an estimate would be nice!

Answer 1

If you're going to estimate it, you have to do what no other president has done... include what's in social security & the estimated amount people will pay into social security this year.

Answer 2

It was a projected 3 trillion.  I say projected because despite the popular myth, it never existed.  All presidents draft an economic plan and recommendations to balance the budget.  Most of those plans can basically be summarized as follows: don't increase spending, and keep taxation where it is.  To make matters worse, they follow congressional accounting rules, which is a nice-sounding way of saying they cook the books.

To give Clinton credit though, he came the closest to achieving a surplus.  I think it was only millions below the red line, as opposed to billions.

Answer 3

The surplus created in 2000 was $230 billion, the largest in history. This followed budget surpluses of $123 billion in 1999 and $69 billion in 1998.

It was this surplus that led to the big debate between Bush and Gore during the 2000 election -- should we give it back to the people in the form of tax cuts (Bush) or let the government keep it and largely use it to fund Social Security (Gore's lockbox)?

Answer 4

Time and time again, anyone reading the mainstream news or reading articles on the Internet will read the claim that President Clinton not only balanced the budget, but had a surplus. This is then used as an argument to further highlight the fiscal irresponsibility of the federal government under the Bush administration.

The claim is generally made that Clinton 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--though, interestingly, $360 billion is not the sum of the alleged surpluses of the three years in question ($69B + $123B + $230B = $422B, not $360B).

While not defending the increase of the federal debt under President Bush, it is aggravating seeing Clinton's record promoted as having generated a surplus. It never happened. There was never a surplus and the cold hard facts support that position. In fact, far from a $360 billion reduction in the national debt in FY1998-FY2000, there was an increase of $281 billion.

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).

in no year did the national debt go down, nor did Clinton leave President Bush with a budget surplus that Bush subsequently turned into a deficit. 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. And 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.

Keep in mind that President Bush took office in January 2001 and his first budget took effect October 1, 2001 for the year ending September 30, 2002 (FY2002). So the $133.29 billion deficit in the year ending September 2001 was Clinton's. Granted, Bush supported a tax refund where taxpayers received checks in 2001. However, the total amount refunded to taxpayers was $38 billion . So even if we assume that $38 billion of the FY2001 deficit was due to Bush's tax refunds which were 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 clearly did not achieve a surplus and he didn't leave President Bush with a surplus.

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. Since Social Security had more money coming in than it had to pay in benefits to retired persons, all that extra money was immediately 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 .

Sorry ran out of breath..but my point is it was all a lie and the future of social security has been put at risk because of it.

I like to call it the Enron shuffle.