On Sep 1, 8:45 am, wrote:
On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 05:54:08 -0500, thunder
wrote:





On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:22:39 -0500, jpjccd wrote:

On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:56:50 -0700, Jim wrote:

In fairness, the budget surplus was due to both parties cooperating. It
only took one party a few months to undue the surplus. Which one was
that?

Any reasonable debate will not be enhanced by citing cynical, biased
pieces written by partisans.

There has never been a "surplus."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_public_debt

Not true. You can have a *budget* surplus and still have debt. Bush did
inherit a $128 billion surplus.

Not true? I will accept that if you can show me where I have stated
anything that is factually incorrect. Since I'm waging a war on
disingenuous semantics, you should also be able to show me where I
used the term "budget surplus." If you can do that, I may even be
willing to concede your "not true" indictment.

Still, just for a little bit of morning amusement, I'll proffer this;

"The only debt that matters is the total national debt. You can have a
surplus and a debt at the same time, but you can't have a surplus if
the amount of debt is going up each year. And the national debt went
up every single year under Clinton. Had Clinton really had a surplus
the national debt would have gone down. It didn't go down precisely
because Clinton had a deficit every single year. The U.S. Treasury's
historical record of the national debt verifies this.

A balanced budget or a budget surplus is a great thing, but it's only
relevant if the budget surplus turns into a real surplus at the end of
the fiscal year. In Clinton's case, it never did."


it also matters if the rate at which the debt is increasing is
increasing (think 2nd derivative). and if you pay only interest on
debt the debt doesn't decrease. but if you borrow and spend like the
radical republicans did, THEN the debt increases

and bush and reagan were the biggest spenders in US history