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

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?

Because government agencies were buying Government Account
Series Securities, as I pointed out before. Social Security, for
example, doesn't invest by buying stocks or other public issues.
They invest by buying GAS securities. If they invested $1B
by buying securities worth $1.2B at maturity, the government
debt would rise by $0.2B at the time of purchase.

Put it this way:

Tax revenues for a year: $2T
Total expenses for a year: $1.8T
Budget surplus: $200B

If it's all used to pay off existing public debt (Savings Bonds,
T-Bills, whatever), the *public* part of the debt would go
down by $200B *AND* the total debt would decline by
the same $200B. What actually happens, though, is the
government retires some public debt and invests the
rest by buying GAS securities, something like this:

$200B budget surplus
$20B retirement of public debt
$180B investments in GAS securities with a value at
maturity of $250B.

Public debt is lower by $20B.
Government debt is higher by $70B
Total debt increases by $50B.

The government still ran a surplus and paid off debt.
It's no secret *future* government obligations continue
to rise -- and will as long as SS takes in more money
than it pays out.