On Tue, 01 Sep 2009 07:45:20 -0500, jpjccd 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."

http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16

Talk about disingenuous. Let's see, Clinton did have a budget surplus.
Debt, as a percentage of GDP, went down. Our debt load went down, but
you are right, he didn't have a surplus.