Thanks, Mr. President! 2015 Budget Year Deficit Lowest Since 2007

[hoosier_daddy]

Congressional Budget Office: Budget deficit drops to $435B

WASHINGTON (AP) — Congressional budget analysts said Wednesday that the federal government ran a deficit of $435 billion in the just-completed budget year, the smallest deficit since 2007 and well below the record shortfalls of President Bush's last fiscal year.

The Congressional Budget Office report says it's the sixth consecutive drop in a row for the deficit, when measured against the size of the economy, since the $1.4 trillion deficit of Bush's last fiscal year of 2009. 

[DaBoz]

Thanks to sky high tax hike that came through Obamacare!


So you are cheering Obamas Higher taxes. Now tell us how Higher taxes Helped us and the economy?

[wvit1001]

I didn't see any tax hike. How much have your taxes increased boz.

[hoosier_daddy]

yeah, the back to clinton level tax hike has something to do with it.  for sure.  duh.  that is a reason why we had 4 straight surpluses when clinton was president.  and why they ended abruptly when bush took over and cut taxes primarily for the rich.  plus his two senseless wars being put ENTIRELY ON THE CREDIT CARD....no tax hikes to pay for them.  we have never had even one war that was not at least partially funded by increased tax hikes, bush had two wars put on the credit card. 

[Local5th]

Yup. Well below Bush's worst year. With a little more work maybe Obama can get it down to Bush's average.

[hoosier_daddy]

bush started with a surplus, with a 4.5% unemployment rate, with a stock market that had tripled under clinton, and no american troops in combat for 7 straight years.  compare that to what it was like when obama started, if you can stand to take your tin foil hat off long enough to be fair about it.  the economy has improved from where it started every year under obama.  bush cannot say that.   

[sweetwater5s9]

According to the

Treasury Department, the level of debt when Bush left office on Jan. 20, 2009, was either $6.307 trillion (the amount of debt held by the public) or $10.627 trillion (the amount of publicly held debt plus debt held by the government).

Politifact.
..............................................................................................

Time and time again, anyone reading the mainstream news or reading articles on the Internet will read the claim that President Clinton not only balanced the budget, but had a surplus.

It's curious to see Clinton's record promoted as having generated a surplus.   It never happened. There was never a surplus and the facts support that position. In fact, far from a $360 billion reduction in the national debt in FY1998-FY2000, there was an increase of $281 billion.

Verifying this is as simple as accessing the U.S. Treasury/.  See Below about link.

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.

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.

Keep in mind that President Bush took office in January 2001 and his first budget took effect October 1, 2001 for the year ending September 30, 2002 (FY2002). So the $133.29 billion deficit in the year ending September 2001 was Clinton's. Granted, Bush supported a tax refund where taxpayers received checks in 2001. However, the total amount refunded to taxpayers was only $38 billion.

Clinton clearly did not achieve a surplus and he didn't leave President Bush with a surplus.

When it is claimed that Clinton paid down the national debt, that is patently false--as can be seen, the national debt went up every single year. What Clinton did do was pay down the public debt--notice that the claimed surplus is relatively close to the decrease in the public debt for those years. But he paid down the public debt by borrowing far more money in the form of intragovernmental holdings (mostly Social Security).

Interestingly, this most likely was not even a conscious decision by Clinton. The Social Security Administration is legally required to take all its surpluses and buy U.S. Government securities, and the U.S. Government readily sells those securities--which automatically and immediately becomes intragovernmental holdings. The economy was doing well due to the dot-com bubble and people were earning a lot of money and paying a lot into Social Security. Since Social Security had more money coming in than it had to pay in benefits to retired persons, all that extra money was immediately used to buy U.S. Government securities. The government was still running deficits, but since there was so much money coming from excess Social Security contributions there was no need to borrow more money directly from the public. As such, the public debt went down while intragovernmental holdings continued to skyrocket.

The net effect was that the national debt most definitely did not get paid down because we did not have a surplus. The government just covered its deficit by borrowing money from Social Security rather than the public.

If there was a surplus and it wasn't used to pay down the debt, then that means it was spent--which means even if there could have been a surplus, it evaporated the moment it was spent. During the Clinton years, not only was it spent--the government borrowed even more! Every year!

• Go to the U.S. Treasury website: http://www.treasury.gov/
  
• Scroll to the "Bureaus" section and click on "Bureau of the Public Debt" which takes you to http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/
  
• Scroll down to the section "The U.S. Public Debt" and click on "See the U.S. Public Debt to the Penny."
• This takes you to the link I originally provided: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np
  
  
  
  
  Clinton Surplus Myth