On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 07:01:28 -0400, Horvath
wrote:

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



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.

Then why did the debt go up? Slick Willie pocketing the extra money?



Go back and re-read what Wolfie wrote. The "total debt", which you
reference, is composed of two components, a "public debt", which is
owed to those who buy the various treasury bills, etc. to fund the
annual shortfall (deficit) and the "government debt", which is owed to
various governmental agencies. The "public debt" component was
decreasing during the Clinton years by the amount of the annual
surpluses.

While it is easy to poke holes in governmental accounting for any
number of reasons, the simple matter is that it is the same accounting
for both democrats and republicans and the republicans seem to have an
aversion to fiscal responsibility. Ideally we would have neither a
surplus nor a deficit, but we certainly shouldn't have a system that
has no linkage between spending and taxes, as the republicans seem to
prefer.