# Clinton claimed he had "four surplus budgets" at DNC speech **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [September 6, 2012, 10:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918 "2012-09-06T22:35:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 8:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/61 "2012-09-07T08:16:33Z")
I’ve explained this before, multiple times, and will try One.More.Time. (I don’t want to be BANNED for large font size; please use the Zoom function in the View Menu of your Browser to enlarge the following.) \*\*You can include trusts like Social Security in federal budget accounting. That’s a consistent viewpoint for analysis. You can exclude trusts like Social Security from federal budget accounting. That’s a consistent viewpoint for analysis. What you _cannot do_, if you want to remain intellectually honest, is to adopt one perspective when it suits your propaganda, and the other when it doesn’t.\*\* The GOP shrieked that Clinton used the Social Security surplus to “doctor” his books; now they’re shrieking about Social Security deficit. Aren’t you supposed to dance with the girl you brought to the party? Hope this helps. ---
**Author:** ![lorion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/278dde/32.png) [@lorion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lorion)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 10:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/62 "2012-09-07T10:52:48Z")
> [@Robot\_Arm](#): > > You started with $20. You end with whatever thing you spent the $20 on, an IOU worth $20, and an obligation to pay $20. I would say you broke even. > > If I’m following this all correctly, **moonshot** and **OMG** are trying to call this a $20 deficit. The debt is $20, and they’re not accepting that the government (in a different account) now holds an asset worth $20 that it didn’t have at the beginning. > > Would someone let me know if that’s remotely close? I’m not sure this is right, if you spend $20 you don’t need to receive an asset worth $20. If I spend that money watching a movie or helping provide affordable health care to the poor, it might be money well spent, but I don’t receive an asset according to traditional accounting. Of course if the money was spent by betting on the ponies or lining the pockets of corrupt politicians, it’s pretty clear you don’t end up with anything worthwhile. The real question is where that $20 came from. If you got it by borrowing from a bank or selling T-bills to the public, you’re running a deficit. If you got it by collecting $20 in taxes, you have a balanced budget. And if you got it from raising $30 in taxes (even if $20 were raised by social security taxes which you subsequently wrote an IOU to yourself for) you’ve got yourself a surplus. ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/63 "2012-09-07T11:12:37Z")
Even Democrats realize that the Clinton “surplus” was a myth. > [@](#): > > **So the table itself, according to the figures issued yesterday, showed the Federal Government ran a surplus. Absolutely false. This reporter ought to do his work. This crowd never has asked for or kept up with or checked the facts. Eric Planin–all he has to do is not spread rumors or get into the political message. Both Democrats and Republicans are all running this year and next and saying surplus, surplus. Look what we have done. It is false. The actual figures show that from the beginning of the fiscal year until now we had to borrow $127,800,000,000.** — Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings, October 28, 1999 > **[C-SPAN.org](https://www.c-span.org/clip/3666049)** ---
**Author:** ![steronz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steronz/32/11765_2.png) [@steronz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/steronz)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/64 "2012-09-07T12:02:27Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I’ll make my example even simpler: I spend $20 today on something, anything. > > I then do one of two things: > > 1. Nothing. > > 2. Prepare a statement, that I notarize, promising to pay myself back $20. > > Explain how option 1 or option 2 is different in any functional way. In (1) I’m clearly not running a deficit. I earned $20, I spent $20. If both those scenarios are functionally equivalent, then I must not be running a deficit in (2), right? ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/65 "2012-09-07T12:10:56Z")
Reynold’s Wrap makes a nice thick aluminum foil for grilling purposes that you might try. It even has a non-stick coating that might make it more comfortable for longer wear. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/66 "2012-09-07T12:18:09Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > Even Democrats realize that the Clinton “surplus” was a myth. > — Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings, October 28, 1999 > > [C-SPAN.org](http://www.c-spanarchives.org/clip/3666049) Who declared that all Democrats also understand assets and liabilities? Shoot, I love Fritz Hollings, but I bet I can also find Democrats who think the earth is 3,000 years old. ---
**Author:** ![Linden\_Arden](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/53a042/32.png) [@Linden\_Arden](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Linden_Arden)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/67 "2012-09-07T12:45:29Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > Those junk numbers are used by Washington to hide how fiscally irresponsible they have been with your money. Inaccurate and misleading. > > If the federal government only had a $455 billion deficit in FY 2008, why did it need to barrow over $1 trillion that year? TARP was in FY 2008-09 and was off budget. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/68 "2012-09-07T13:16:12Z")
> [@Linden\_Arden](#): > > TARP was in FY 2008-09 and was off budget. “Off-budget” does not mean spending is excluded from deficit calculations. ---
**Author:** ![tim314](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim314/32/3468_2.png) [@tim314](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim314)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/69 "2012-09-07T14:42:21Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I’ll make my example even simpler: I spend $20 today on something, anything. > > I then do one of two things: > > 1. Nothing. > > 2. Prepare a statement, that I notarize, promising to pay myself back $20. > > Explain how option 1 or option 2 is different in any functional way. If you spend $20 and take in zero, then yes, you are running a deficit, regardless of whether you loan money to yourself or not. But that’s not analogous to the Clinton surpluses. If you take in $20 and then loan the money to yourself, that’s more analogous to the surplus. Or to make it more concrete, say I make $20 and loan it to my daughter. My family has a net surplus of $20 if we haven’t spent anything, but if you were to calculate our “intrafamily debt” it would be $20, because one family member has to pay another back 20 bucks. (Of course that is balanced by the fact that one family member is _owed_ $20 bucks.) ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/70 "2012-09-07T15:25:55Z")
> [@tim314](#): > > If you spend $20 and take in zero, then yes, you are running a deficit, regardless of whether you loan money to yourself or not. But that’s not analogous to the Clinton surpluses. > > If you take in $20 and then loan the money to yourself, that’s more analogous to the surplus. Or to make it more concrete, say I make $20 and loan it to my daughter. My family has a net surplus of $20 if we haven’t spent anything, but if you were to calculate our “intrafamily debt” it would be $20, because one family member has to pay another back 20 bucks. (Of course that is balanced by the fact that one family member is _owed_ $20 bucks.) But intragovernmental debt is just as real as public debt. Social Security is required to invest its surpluses into special non marketable treasury securities so that the trust fund monies are held in reserve for payments to future beneficiaries. When the Social Security system starts to run a deficit (already has) because of insufficient revenue to pay the benefits of retiring baby-boomers, it will need to rely on its multi-trillion dollar trust fund. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/71 "2012-09-07T15:26:52Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I’ll make my example even simpler: I spend $20 today on something, anything. > > I then do one of two things: > > 1. Nothing. > > 2. Prepare a statement, that I notarize, promising to pay myself back $20. > > Explain how option 1 or option 2 is different in any functional way. As pointed out last time, your analogy fails because we’re not talking about paying the money to a third party. The U.S. is paying itself. In a proper analogy, that would taking the money from one pocket and putting it another, then writing down an IOU in the first pocket. You’re the one pretending like the fact that the money isn’t in one pocket means you don’t have it. Another way to say it would be that you put the money in the bank. You then write yourself an IOU. You then spend that IOU. Then the person you gave it to takes it to the bank to get the money from the IOU. That’s right, the IOU is a check. Would you say that the money isn’t yours because it’s not in your pocket? ---
**Author:** ![CJJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecc23a/32.png) [@CJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CJJ)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/72 "2012-09-07T15:32:26Z")
The Social Security reform of 1983 (Greenspan Comission) can be understood as a kind of deal between groups A and B, set up to handle the retirement of the large baby-boom population. For about 30 years, group A would play higher taxes than necessary, while group B would pay less than necessary. Then the situation would be reversed for the subsequent ~30 years. Group A are the folks whose taxes are mostly SS payroll taxes–the working and middle class. For the past 30 years, because of payroll tax increases created by the comission, group A has been paying higher-than-necessary taxes for social security–that is why more money has gone into SS than has been paid out. Group B are the folks whose taxes are mostly income tax–the rich, to put it glibly, since much of their income comes from investments and payroll taxes are capped to the first ~$108K of working income anyway. Group B got large income tax breaks under Reagan–most notably in the 1986 Tax Reform Act, when the top rate dropped from 50% to 28% while lower rates were increased. The implicit promise of the deal is that at some point–as the boomer population aged and there were more folks collecting SS than paying in, the situation would flip such that group A would collect and group B would pay. The embodiment of this deal is the SS trust fund; it grew as group A paid more it, and it represents the size of the promise that group B would pay once the flip occurred. Perhaps that deal seems goofy, but that is the deal that was made, and it’s obviously unfair to change it now after the first 30 years have run out. Of course group B would love to “reform” SS now, but that’s because group B has been getting a loan from the middle/working class for decades–the loan papers are the trreasury bills the SS surplus was invested in by law–and now they don’t want to pay it back. Anybody claiming the trust fund is fake or a phony accounting trick is basically saying it’s OK for the rich to default on that loan. ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/73 "2012-09-07T15:33:18Z")
SS expects the money that the government borrowed over the past 50 years to be paid back, with interest. ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/74 "2012-09-07T15:43:50Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > SS expects the money that the government borrowed over the past 50 years to be paid back, with interest. Which is what the Constitution requires. There’s been a lot of efforts to make people believe that the trust fund is just valueless paper, but one can only come to that conclusion if one totally disregards the constitutional requirement that the validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned. You can’t simultaneously support the Constitution and denigrate the Social Security Trust Fund. ---
**Author:** ![Gangster\_Octopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a8b319/32.png) [@Gangster\_Octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gangster_Octopus)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/75 "2012-09-07T15:43:54Z")
Forget it Jake, it’s moonshot925town. ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 3:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/76 "2012-09-07T15:54:25Z")
> [@Ravenman](#): > > Which is what the Constitution requires. There’s been a lot of efforts to make people believe that the trust fund is just valueless paper, but one can only come to that conclusion if one totally disregards the constitutional requirement that the validity of the public debt of the United States shall not be questioned. So you agree that the intergovernmental debt is real debt and must be counted? Such as the securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. ---
**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/77 "2012-09-07T15:58:36Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > So you agree that the intergovernmental debt is real debt and must be counted? > > Such as the securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. Can you agree that the debt is balanced by the asset (the note to repay)? ---
**Author:** ![Astral\_Rejection](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/258eb7/32.png) [@Astral\_Rejection](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Astral_Rejection)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/78 "2012-09-07T16:04:55Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > So you agree that the intergovernmental debt is real debt and must be counted? > > Such as the securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. I’m gonna try one last time. \*\*MOONSHOT Can you explain why everyone - democrats, republicans, lawyers, accountants, and so on - have been lying about this since forever? Bonus question: what qualifies you to declare that the way accounting works and has worked since “accounting” was invented as a concept is false and doesn’t work?\*\* ---
**Author:** ![Ravenman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ravenman/32/2929_2.png) [@Ravenman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ravenman)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/79 "2012-09-07T16:11:00Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > So you agree that the intergovernmental debt is real debt and must be counted? > > Such as the securities held by the Social Security Trust Fund. See #77 and #78. Can I ask you why you think having large balances in the Social Security Trust Fund is a bad thing, and also having shrinking balances in the Social Security Trust Fund is a bad thing? ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/80 "2012-09-07T16:25:57Z")
> [@Astral\_Rejection](#): > > I’m gonna try one last time. > > \*\*MOONSHOT > > Can you explain why everyone - democrats, republicans, lawyers, accountants, and so on - have been lying about this since forever? Bonus question: what qualifies you to declare that the way accounting works and has worked since “accounting” was invented as a concept is false and doesn’t work?\*\* Because Clinton cooked the books and many people were duped. It is clear to anyone capable of addition and subtraction that Clinton didn’t have surplus because the debt increased every year. But for some reason the lie is still repeated. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918.md?page=5)