Budget Deficits and Federal Spending

reply to post by spinalremain


government accounting is a farce any anyone who believes the clinton surplus is naive.

look it up for yourself.

reply to post by spinalremain

Like the man or not, the country flourished.

CLINTON set-up the economic collapse!!!! Read this POST near the top.

The Free trade agreements SIGNED BY CLINTON allowed US companies to easily move off-shore to produce goods and ship them to the USA with out "penalty" (tariffs) It cost America 20 percent of its manufacturing jobs in just 14 years,

As I said Reagan was also to blame.

PLEASE look at the fact instead of spouting "Party line" we can no longer let TPTB blind us to what is actually happening - the raping of this country by BOTH parties!

Bill Clinton, with one stroke of the pen, gladly signed away media, for the Republicons to propagandize us all with. (Boy is that ever coming home to roost though [Rupert Murdoch] ) But both parties are rotten to the core, lets throw them all out.

reply to post by simone50m

Bill Clinton, with one stroke of the pen, gladly signed away media, for the Republicons to propagandize us all with. (Boy is that ever coming home to roost though [Rupert Murdoch] ) But both parties are rotten to the core, lets throw them all out.

It is nothing more than a Dog and Pony show.

Did it ever occur to you what a great move it was??? It now has the country very nicely divided and at eachothers throats while the BANKSTERS finish raping us!

I find FOX news vs MSNBC absolutely HYSTERICAL considering GE OWNS MSNBC and JPMorgan acted as advisors brokering the deal. Also JPMorgan is again the biggest print media mogul

www.abovetopsecret.com...

U.S. Congressional Record February 9, 1917: J.P. Morgan interests bought 25 of America's leading newspapers, and inserted their own editors, in order to control the media. www.mindfully.org...

JP Morgan: Our next big media player? (April 13, 2010) JP Morgan controls 54 U.S. daily newspapers,and owns 31 television stations. www.newsandtech.com...

Media Conglomerates, Mergers, Concentration of Ownership: www.globalissues.org...

Who controls the media www.nowfoundation.org...

Interlocking Directorates
Media corporations share members of the board of directors with a variety of other large corporations, including banks, investment companies, oil companies, health care and pharmaceutical companies and technology companies. This list shows board interlocks for the following major media interests:
www.fair.org...

reply to post by spinalremain

You're saying the Clinton Admin reducing the deficit is a farse, and yet the charts are right there in the OP.

here is some info on how they did it.

The Myth of the Clinton Surplus

....................................National Debt.............Deficit
FY1993 09/30/1993 $4.411488 trillion
FY1994 09/30/1994 $4.692749 trillion $281.26 billion
FY1995 09/29/1995 $4.973982 trillion $281.23 billion
FY1996 09/30/1996 $5.224810 trillion $250.83 billion
FY1997 09/30/1997 $5.413146 trillion $188.34 billion
FY1998 09/30/1998 $5.526193 trillion $113.05 billion
FY1999 09/30/1999 $5.656270 trillion $130.08 billion
FY2000 09/29/2000 $5.674178 trillion $17.91 billion
FY2001 09/28/2001 $5.807463 trillion $133.29 billion

As can clearly be seen, in no year did the national debt go down, nor did Clinton leave President Bush with a surplus that Bush subsequently turned into a deficit. Yes, the deficit was almost eliminated in FY2000 (ending in September 2000 with a deficit of "only" $17.9 billion), but it never reached zero--let alone a positive surplus number. And Clinton's last budget proposal for FY2001, which ended in September 2001, generated a $133.29 billion deficit. The growing deficits started in the year of the last Clinton budget, not in the first year of the Bush administration.

Originally posted by crimvelvet
U.S. Congressional Record February 9, 1917: J.P. Morgan interests bought 25 of America's leading newspapers, and inserted their own editors, in order to control the media. www.mindfully.org...

JP Morgan: Our next big media player? (April 13, 2010) JP Morgan controls 54 U.S. daily newspapers,and owns 31 television stations. www.newsandtech.com...

Combine that with Murdoch's empire and how the wealth in this country continues to be consolidated by the few and it paints a pretty grim picture. I'd like to think or hope that eventually we as a society say "Enough's enough, this just isn't healthy" but the fact is most people aren't even aware of this.

The majority of people get their news from mainstream media, which is scary enough. I honestly don't know what the solution is though, it won't be through the current political system simply because of the way it is structured now and how corrupt everything has gotten. True revolution is the only way and if that occurs it'll probably be another 50 or 100 years before another one will be needed.

A 133 billion dollar deficit is pretty damn low, regardless. On a side note, one of the alarming things that occurred under the GWB administration is only 3 million jobs were created, compared to 23 million under Clinton. That number under GWB is the worst under any POTUS since those statistics have been tracked.

Complete History Of U.S. Debt Defaults

The Continental-Currency Default

The first default of the United States was on its first issuance of debt: the currency emitted by the Continental Congress of 1775. In June of 1775 the Continental Congress of the United States of America, located in Philadelphia, representing the 13 states of the union, issued bills of credit amounting to 2 million Spanish milled dollars to be paid four years hence in four annual installments.

The next month an additional 1 million was issued. A third issue of 3 million followed. The next year they issued an additional 13 million dollars of notes. These were the first of the "Continental dollars," which were used to fund the war of revolution against Great Britain. [color=limegreen]The issues continued until an estimated 241 million dollars were outstanding, not including British forgeries.

Congress had no power of taxation, so it made each of the several states responsible for redeeming a proportion of the notes according to population. The administration of these notes was delegated to a "Board of the Treasury" in 1776. To refuse the notes or receive them below par was punishable by having your ears cut off and other horrible penalties.

The notes progressively depreciated as the public began to realize that neither the states nor their Congress had the will or capacity to redeem them. In November of 1779, Congress announced a devaluation of 38.5 to 1 on the Continentals, which amounted to an admission of default. In this year refusal to accept the notes became widespread, and trade was reduced to barter — causing sporadic famines and other privations.

The problem has been around for a long long time !

Before the Declaration of Independence even ?

The article is interesting and cites a few other "defaults"......

I wonder if those British Forgeries have carried over into today's debt ??????? $$

reply to post by xuenchen


According to FactCheck, it appears that there was a deficit throughout Clinton's terms if you use an alternative method of counting.

From Source:

This is based on an annual document called the "Financial Report of the U.S. Government," which reports what the governments books would look like if kept on an accrual basis like those of most corporations, rather than the cash basis that the government has always used. The principal difference is that under accrual accounting the government would book immediately the costs of promises made to pay future benefits to government workers and Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. But even under accrual accounting, the annual reports showed surpluses of $69.2 billion in fiscal 1998, $76.9 billion in fiscal 1999, and $46 billion for fiscal year 2000. So even if the government had been using that form of accounting the deficit would have been erased for those three years.

And if you go to this page, scroll down and open Table 7.1, and then scroll down to the bottom where it shows fiscal years 1996-2001, you'll see the following:

Year.....Equals Held by the public
1996.....3,734,073
1997.....3,772,344
1998.....3,721,099
1999.....3,632,363
2000.....3,409,804
2001.....3,319,615

Note that there are two columns between 'End of Fiscal Year' and 'Equals: Held by the Public - Total'. I left them out for simplicity. (I would have given a direct link, but it leads to a download of the excel file. Decided it was best to let people intentionally try to download the file. )

The debt held by the public did indeed decrease from '97 through 2001 before rising again in 2002, and that I believe is why it was considered a surplus.

reply to post by Jenna


strange how they pick and choose as needed !

Update, Feb. 11: Some readers wrote to us saying we should have made clear the difference between the federal deficit and the federal debt. A deficit occurs when the government takes in less money than it spends in a given year. The debt is the total amount the government owes at any given time. So the debt goes up in any given year by the amount of the deficit, or it decreases by the amount of any surplus. The debt the government owes to the public decreased for a while under Clinton, but the debt was by no means erased.

Other readers have noted a USA Today story stating that, under an alternative type of accounting, the final four years of the Clinton administration taken together would have shown a deficit. This is based on an annual document called the "Financial Report of the U.S. Government," which reports what the governments books would look like if kept on an accrual basis like those of most corporations, rather than the cash basis that the government has always used.The principal difference is that under accrual accounting the government would book immediately the costs of promises made to pay future benefits to government workers and Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. But even under accrual accounting, the annual reports showed surpluses of $69.2 billion in fiscal 1998, $76.9 billion in fiscal 1999, and $46 billion for fiscal year 2000. So even if the government had been using that form of accounting the deficit would have been erased for those three years.

Having either party in charge or a balance of both will do nothing to fix the problem or end the deficit or pay down the debt. The problems is we have exported most of our manufacturing and jobs, The rest of the world knows we cannot expand the economy enough to cover another credit expansion so they are not giving us any credit. We have been living on credit from the federal reserve for the past couple years but that weakens the dollar. So at this point it is only a matter of time as the economy is in its death throws.

This whole debt ceiling flap is all bout getting our credit limit raised and they will pass it eventually but the only one that will lend to us is the Federal reserve which will crash the dollar so we are damned if we do and damned if we don't. The only guy who has a viable plan is Ron Paul by destroying the bonds the Feds hold and eliminating 1.6 trillion on phoney federal debt we are supposed to pay interest on that would buy us the time to really fix this things. However that is not going to happen because the current crop of politicians will continue our economic suicidal death spiral being the ignorant and corrupt tools they are.

If republicans had a brain in thier head they would declare Ron Paul thier nominee right now and dispense with the primaries. But we all know that will not happen for lack of brains....

PS the whole surplus thing is a complete joke if there is a surplus then there is no debt. Government fuzzy math and creative reporting is all it is. You either have a surplus of money or debt not both. They make it sound like they have access to the money coming in and payed off the debt which is of course laughable because they only way government gets money is by borrowing. All those taxes Joe six pack thinks pay for government services goes to the Federal Reserve to pay interest on the debt from government borrowing. The whole system is complete fiscal insanity and the greatest ponzi scheme in the history of the world!

Originally posted by xuenchen
strange how they pick and choose as needed !

Accrual and cash basis are just the two different accounting methods used for financial records. So to use one over another to try to prove a point is a little silly, IMO. Most corporations don't use cash basis for various reasons, for example if a company has accounts payable or receivable it's simply not possible to use cash basis (which can only be used when a cash transaction actually takes place).

Regardless, that article states that the government has always used cash basis for financial records, so comparatively the numbers are still the same.

Originally posted by hawkiye
PS the whole surplus thing is a complete joke if there is a surplus then there is no debt. Government fuzzy math and creative reporting is all it is. You either have a surplus of money or debt not both.

Incorrect. I explained this in the first post, but I'll do so again.

Say you have a mortgage and a car loan that total $100,000. Each month you make enough money to cover the $1000 you pay on your mortgage and car loan, the rest of your monthly bills, and you have $100 left in the bank when the next month starts. You had more money coming in than you had going out and the money left over at the beginning of the next month is your surplus. Your mortgage and car loan still exist, you didn't pay them off and you still owe that debt. But since you had more money coming in for the month than you had to pay out, you still had a surplus for the month.

What you are confusing are the words 'deficit' and 'debt'. A deficit is when you have more money going out than you have coming in. If at the end of the month you were negative $100 in your bank account, it would be a deficit. The debt is the money you still owe. The words are used interchangeably on occasion, but they do not mean the same thing.

reply to post by Jenna


While I still have to digest some of what you've posted Jenna, I will agree that spending has gone out of control. There are no more excuses for the Obama administration, there was never an excuse for the democrats and republicans, we're up to $14 trillion at the moment. Spineless, the lot of them, and I am getting tired of the party divide. I'm totally turned off by the Democrats, have always been turned off by the Republicans, I can't for the life of me support either party in good conscious again... I will acknowlegde the few individuals in each party that have stood up, but the overall parties.. nope.

How high does the debt have to get before we realize this country's broke? $14 trillion and counting... somebody is going to have to pay for this.... debt doesn't just dissappear overnight.

reply to post by hawkiye


Ron Paul will be the worst for this country but then again I don't buy libertarianism for a second. I will agree that at the core of this is the jobs (many manufacturing) dissappearing. But what do we do? Do we completely demolish minimum wages for the individual worker? Competing with wages the likes of Vietnam? Do we completely remove regulations just to ensure jobs stay here?? I doubt this. The only effective way I see any way of us saving jobs is by heavily taxing businesses who choose to shift jobs overseas... this isn't the core solution, but it's one of the solutions. Tax cuts to businesses, especially small businesses, who hire americans? I like this idea however I don't know about it's effectiveness. Tax cuts at the business where I work will not create jobs, it will just fill the void of profit making.... it will life alittle more of the burden off the business.

Another part of the problem, our broken system. Our broken social systems like medicare, social security, these systems are essential in my view, but they are broken, they consume nearly 40% of this country's expenditure. The military, what the heck are doing with a $680 billion per year military budget? Seriously? Our military size is about the same that of Russias and yet we hold a military budget 10 fold that size. There are many holes in our government, many leaks, we have alot of work that needs to be done....but things are getting worse.

Originally posted by origamiandurbanism
A 133 billion dollar deficit is pretty damn low, regardless. On a side note, one of the alarming things that occurred under the GWB administration is only 3 million jobs were created, compared to 23 million under Clinton. That number under GWB is the worst under any POTUS since those statistics have been tracked.

you dont think the internet boom had anything to do with that? how about clinton was in the right place and right time. lol @ thinking clinton created jobs.

Here is a simple fact check you can do at home in a minute. Take a five dollar bill and drop it in an empty bucket ( or other suitable container of you choice), now try to pull a twenty dollar bill out of said bucket.

reply to post by origamiandurbanism

.....I honestly don't know what the solution is though, it won't be through the current political system simply because of the way it is structured now and how corrupt everything has gotten. True revolution is the only way and if that occurs it'll probably be another 50 or 100 years before another one will be needed.

Unfortunately due to the push for Global Goverance I do not think a REAL Revolution stands a chance.

MONEY
Revolutions cost money, LOTS of money. France and Russia are not in the position to finance a revolution although I am sure CHINA would be happy to

This is a bit of history showing what I am talking about.
Remember the Tsar of Russia HAD ALREADY STEPPED DOWN BEFORE the bankers stepped in and insisted Canada turn Trotsky loose. Lenin was sent across Europe on the famous "sealed train." with the money ($5 to $6 million in gold) the bankers used to BANKROLL the Bolshevik Revolution.

Some think part of the price of that gold was the promise to wipeout the Russian Royal family in retaliation for defying the Banksters earlier.

This is how the Tsar defyed the Banksters:

The 19th century became known as the age of the Rothschild's when it was estimated they controlled half of the world's wealth. While their wealth continues to increase today, they have managed to blend into the background,....

Turns out the Tsar of Russia, Alexander II, was well aware of the money changers scam. The Tsar was refusing to allow them to set up a central bank in Russia. If Lincoln could limit the power of the money changers and win the war, the bankers would not be able to split America and hand it back to Britain and France as planned. The Tsar knew that this handing back would come at a cost which would eventually need to be paid back by attacking Russia, it being clearly in the money changers sights. The Tsar declared that if France or Britain gave help to the South, Russia would consider this an act of war. Britain and France would instead wait in vain to have the wealth of the colonies returned to them, and while they waited Lincoln won the civil war.... www.xat.org...

If you read the Davison Budhoo's, a senior economist with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), public letter of resignation or Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins you can see American tax payer dollar and American BLOOD has been used by the bankers in their nasty games of Revolution for a long time.

The bankers have infiltrated the school systems and rewritten history to hide their handiwork. The PDFs in the middle of this page give a very good picture of what I mean. The school systems are also used to turn what was independent Americans into Dumbed Down unthinking serfs, ERRrrr I mean "Socialists"

John Dewey Father of Modern, Progressive Education was a founding member of the banker controlled Fabian Society (Note: references to the "CITY" refer to the London Banking district)

“... Over the last quarter-century, historians have by and large ceased writing about the role of ruling elites in the country's evolution. Or if they have taken up the subject, they have done so to argue against its salience for grasping the essentials of American political history. Yet there is something peculiar about this recent intellectual aversion, even if we accept as true the beliefs that democracy, social mobility, and economic dynamism have long inhibited the congealing of a ruling stratum. This aversion has coincided, after all, with one of the largest and fastest-growing disparities in the division of income and wealth in American history....Neglecting the powerful had not been characteristic of historical work before World War II. ” hnn.us...

"For 10 years, William Schmidt, a statistics professor at Michigan State University, has looked at how U.S. students stack up against students in other countries in math and science. "In fourth-grade, we start out pretty well, near the top of the distribution among countries; by eighth-grade, we're around average, and by 12th-grade, we're at the bottom of the heap, outperforming only two countries, Cyprus and South Africa."
:Source

Not a pretty picture is it???

Originally posted by Jenna

Originally posted by hawkiye
PS the whole surplus thing is a complete joke if there is a surplus then there is no debt. Government fuzzy math and creative reporting is all it is. You either have a surplus of money or debt not both.

Incorrect. I explained this in the first post, but I'll do so again.

Say you have a mortgage and a car loan that total $100,000. Each month you make enough money to cover the $1000 you pay on your mortgage and car loan, the rest of your monthly bills, and you have $100 left in the bank when the next month starts. You had more money coming in than you had going out and the money left over at the beginning of the next month is your surplus. Your mortgage and car loan still exist, you didn't pay them off and you still owe that debt. But since you had more money coming in for the month than you had to pay out, you still had a surplus for the month.

What you are confusing are the words 'deficit' and 'debt'. A deficit is when you have more money going out than you have coming in. If at the end of the month you were negative $100 in your bank account, it would be a deficit. The debt is the money you still owe. The words are used interchangeably on occasion, but they do not mean the same thing.

No I am not incorrect and I have no confusion about the deficit vs the debt what you describe is how things work for you and me but the government is not paying thier bills and there has never been a surplus because government has no income. THEY BORROW THE MONEY TO PAY "INTEREST" ON THE DEBT. What they call a surplus is if they supposedly get more taxes then they owe interest on the debt. But the taxes HAVE NEVER COVERED THE INTEREST ON THE DEBT so they borrow more to cover it,. it is complete fiscal insanity.

What is being reported as a surplus is just an outright lie . David Walker former comptroller general during several presidencies exposed the lie look him up. You can't go by the lies and propaganda the government puts out. When they tell you surplus you can be assured it is exactly the opposite. Every penny of what people call money IS BORROWED INTO EXISTENCE AT INTEREST. In order for government to get more money they must borrow it into existence. The interest for that money is never created so there is a false lack created, they create the money mostly through loans but never create enough money to cover interest so we are all competing for money that does not exist. So they create more but it has interest attached to it also. This is why the debt perpetually grows and can never be paid off. If you borrow money to pay interest on your credit card have you eliminated your debt? No and even if you have more money then you owe interest you are creating more debt to pay the interest on existing debt.. As I said fiscal insanity!

Originally posted by Hessling
Personally, I cannot understand why 98% of people put up with the other 2% having everything.

No shortage of bread and circuses.

Yet.

I'm no expert economist, but could it possibly hurt to have the mega-rich pitch in just a little bit more if for no other reason then to have the boat float a wee-bit longer?

I often wonder if they do pitch in, just not tax-wise. And only just enough to keep the old rig afloat.