On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 04:24:23 GMT, "Wolfie" wrote:

Horvath wrote:
On Tue, 29 Jun 2004 12:58:47 GMT, "Wolfie" wrote
this crap:


As anyone can see, the debt increased every year. There never was a
surplus. It was another Clinton lie.

That's total debt, including both public and *government* owned
obligations. Only the public owned obligations reflect the budget
surplus (or deficit) -- the government owned ones reflect federal
agencies buying government securities as investments.

Public-owned debt was:

09/28/2001 3,339,310,176,094.74
09/29/2000 3,405,303,490,221.20
09/30/1999 3,636,104,594,501.81
09/30/1998 3,733,864,472,163.53
09/30/1997 3,789,667,546,849.60

Which clearly shows budget surpluses (from tax revenues being
greater than expenditures) in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001.
It's now up to 4,218,409,719,114.26 (as of 6/25/04), an
increase of 879,099,543,019.52 for Bush's budgets so far.

That's your story.

No, it's the story of the site you cited. Not my fault you
didn't understand it.

At any rate your figures aren't accurate representations of
the budget process -- Clinton's last few budgets DID run
surpluses, more taxes being collected than the government
was spending. The difference between the *budget* and
the federal debt is government agencies -- trust funds, like
Social Security -- buying securities for investments.


Bull****. My figures showed TOTAL Debt. Your figures don't represent
total expenditures.

Right, since I didn't list expenditures. Want them? They're from
the Republican Chairman of the House Policy Committee, BTW.

1998 Revenues $2,100,658,000,000
1998 Expenses $2,030,621,000,000
1998 Surplus $70,037,000,000

1999 Revenues $2,222,239,000,000
1999 Expenses $2,099,496,000,000
1999 Surplus $122,743,000,000

2000 Revenues $2,420,109,000,000
2000 Expenses $2,183,194,000,000
2000 Surplus $236,915,000,000

2001 Revenues $2,405,034,000,000
2001 Expenses $2,277,867,000,000
2001 Surplus $127,167,000,000

More money received than spent.

While you are to be commended for attempting to simplify this topic to
the level that it can be understood by poor Horvath, just remember the
old saying...

"Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the
pig. "