# 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:** 9
**Author:** ![Stratocaster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/stratocaster/32/16393_2.png) [@Stratocaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stratocaster)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/161 "2012-09-10T10:07:49Z")
> [@j666](#): > > And so, we come back to the topic of the board, elections. > > In order to support the system people have paid into their entire working lives, we have to raise taxes. > > There, I said it. Then you better raise a LOT of taxes, including on the middle class. “Tax the rich” is a great sound bite, but it’s not going to do squat for our debt problem. John Mace provided [this cite](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/09/chart-of-the-day-buffett-rule-wouldnt-bring-in-much-revenue/245404/) in a different thread: > [@](#): > > Even if you get really aggressive, it doesn’t help much. Even a tax floor for these individuals at 75% would cover less than 20% of the year’s deficit. And, of course, even most populist among us probably worries that a tax rate that high could do more harm to the U.S. economy than good. All of these calculations also assume that these wealthy individuals wouldn’t find new and creative ways to ensure that their income was shielded from very high tax rates. (They would.) > > So this Buffet Rule is a great populist proposal if the president wants to score some political points, but it has little practical value. It might provide the government a little bit of additional revenue, but unless extremely aggressive, it wouldn’t make a dent in the nation’s deficit problem. To do that, you’ll need to cut entitlements and/or raise taxes much more broadly. 20% of \*the year’s \*deficit, that is. Not the total debt. ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/162 "2012-09-10T14:39:49Z")
President Clinton is not the one who started the accounting fraud that the government uses, it was actually President Johnson. During the 1960’s the federal government began to run large operating budget deficits (Vietnam War, Great Society and Space Race). But Social Security was running large surpluses starting in 1966. In 1967 President Johnson appointed a Commission on Federal Budget Concepts which in its October 1967 report proposed a unified budget to do this. Trust funds would be lumped together with general government operations. It was argued that this would make the budget simpler and easier to understand. Johnson submitted the first unified budget to Congress for Fiscal Year 1969 scheduled to begin on July 1, 1968. Johnson claimed he had a $3.242 billion surplus in FY 1969 when in reality there was a $6.142 billion deficit. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/163 "2012-09-10T14:48:28Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > If there was a real budget surplus the national debt would have been reduced. In fiscal years 1947, 1948, 1951, 1956 and 1957 there was a budget surplus and the national debt was reduced. Those were real surpluses. > > Not a single real surplus during the Clinton Administration. The deficit was significantly reduced but it was never erased. > > In fiscal year 2000 a $237 billion surplus was claimed while the national debt increased by $18 billion. That is ridiculous. If you had such a large surplus in the hundreds of billions you wouldn’t need to barrow. False. The debt WAS reduced. The problem is that the “national debt” consists of “debt held by the public” which represents money the government actually borrows, and “intragovernmental holdings” which is money one part of the government owes another part (for instance, the SS Trust Fund’s cash going to pay for discretionary spending). Debt held by the public is the real debt. It goes down whenever there is a surplus - as it did during the latter Clinton years. It can go down even when intragovernmental holdings, and therefore the national debt, goes up. A surplus/deficit is defined by how much money the government takes in vs. how much it spends in a given year. Period. And in Clinton’s final years, the government took in more than it spent. That is a fact, and there is no need to look at any other numbers. Looking at debt figures simply demonstrates that the government’s debt figures are confusing. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/164 "2012-09-10T14:50:00Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > President Clinton is not the one who started the accounting fraud that the government uses, it was actually President Johnson. > > During the 1960’s the federal government began to run large operating budget deficits (Vietnam War, Great Society and Space Race). > > But Social Security was running large surpluses starting in 1966. > > In 1967 President Johnson appointed a Commission on Federal Budget Concepts which in its October 1967 report proposed a unified budget to do this. Trust funds would be lumped together with general government operations. It was argued that this would make the budget simpler and easier to understand. Johnson submitted the first unified budget to Congress for Fiscal Year 1969 scheduled to begin on July 1, 1968. > > Johnson claimed he had a $3.242 billion surplus in FY 1969 when in reality there was a $6.142 billion deficit. Even if you think that represents a fraud, some (I think two) of Clinton’s surpluses did not involve SS. He had a surplus even if you only count discretionary spending and regular taxes. So that’s an irrelevant point. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/165 "2012-09-10T14:53:06Z")
> [@j666](#): > > Okay, remember, three year old - the national debt went up, but the national _ **public debt** _ did not? Because the national debt includes the intragovernmental debt? > > And the basis of the government accounting practices argument is, the government holds that the “intergovernmental” debt is not really a liability, because it owes the money to itself, BUT people like **Stratocaster** and **Sam Stone** argue the money is actually owed to the trust fund recipients, and therefore is real debt. A legitimate debate. But none of it changes the fact that there were surpluses in Clintons’ final years. The government took in more than it spent in those years. That’s a surplus. In some of those years, the government took in more than it spent in both SS and non-SS accounts (there were surpluses in both, in other words). ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 2:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/166 "2012-09-10T14:54:08Z")
> [@MilTan](#): > > Because the “national debt” counts the government’s liabilities, but doesn’t account for government assets. If you look at “debt held by the public,” which omits US debt held by other government entities, that should have gone down. Which it did. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/167 "2012-09-10T15:08:13Z")
> [@MilTan](#): > > So I trust that when, in the next decade or so, Social Security goes cash flow negative and has to start drawing down on the trust fund, This is a misrepresentation of what the Trust Fund is. SS always “draws down” the TF. The TF is not a savings account that is stashing money for later. It’s simply an account. It takes in money, and it spends it. It’s merely a way of dedicating payroll taxes to SS. It has developed a surplus in past years, and it is now drawing on that surplus (now, not in a decade), which simply means that benefits are now partly paid for from other taxes (to pay back money the rest of the government accounts borrowed from it) as well as payroll taxes. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/168 "2012-09-10T15:11:06Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > So, to put it in terms of household budgeting (which I usually would insist is a bad idea when thinking about national budgets since AFAICT they’re very different animals, but in this case I think it can work,)– > > If I have $100 income for a week, and I spend $90 on groceries, I have $10 left. I could put $10 in my “petty cash jar.” And if I had a rule which said I could only spend money on groceries and any leftover had to go to petty cash, that’s what I’d do. > > But if I had a looser rule that said that, after groceries, any leftover is _owed_ to petty cash, but need not immediately be moved over into that jar, then I might write an IOU to petty cash for ten dollars, then spend the $10 in hand elsewhere. > > In this second case, I gained $100, and I spent $100, and I also have declared my intention to place $10 into petty cash at a later date. > > This does not sound like a deficit or a debt to me. It sounds like I broke even, and made a promise to myself to perform a particular action with my next week’s paycheck. I don’t owe anyone $10–not even myself–but rather, I have created an expectation that I’ll be saving $10 next week. > > Does this parallel seem accurate? If so, why would you call this $10 IOU a debt? I know it’s called an “IOU” for lack of a better term, but no one actually owes anyone anything. It’s just a declaration of what I intend to do with my future money. > > If I keep writing these IOU’s, though, eventually I’m going to have promised all my future paychecks to petty cash. That does seem like a problem. But it’s not a _debt_ problem. Does everyone agree that it’s a problem regardless of whether it involves a debt? And if it’s a problem, does it parallel a similar problem with the social security trust fund even if that problem also doesn’t involve a debt? > > Thanks for any help you can offer on this… This is a fairly good analogy. Not perfect, but good. The important part is this - no matter what you consider that extra cash to be - debt, whatever - it doesn’t change the fact that you made $100 and only spent $90 that week. You had a surplus for the week. That is undeniable, and that is what happened during the latter Clinton years. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/169 "2012-09-10T15:17:21Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > So Clinton did indeed have a deficit every year. No surplus. No, he had a surplus in all those years (4?). In 1 or 2, he had a surplus in both the SS Trust Fund account and in the others. ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/170 "2012-09-10T15:26:30Z")
> [@lance\_strongarm](#): > > Even if you think that represents a fraud, some (I think two) of Clinton’s surpluses did not involve SS. He had a surplus even if you only count discretionary spending and regular taxes. > > So that’s an irrelevant point. I have already explained this. The Social Security trust funds are not the only trust funds. There are other trust funds: Federal hospital insurance trust fund, Federal supplementary medical insurance trust fund, Unemployment trust fund, Airport and airway trust fund, Highway trust fund, Military retirement fund, Civil service retirement and disability fund, Railroad Retirement Board, etc… Before 1968 the government was honest and trust funds were excluded from general government operations. But that changed with Johnson and his unified budget which has been used since 1968. If all trust funds are excluded (not just Social Security) Clinton had a deficit every year. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/171 "2012-09-10T15:38:57Z")
> [@moonshot925](#): > > I have already explained this. > > The Social Security trust funds are not the only trust funds. > > There are other trust funds: > > Federal hospital insurance trust fund, Federal supplementary medical insurance trust fund, Unemployment trust fund, Airport and airway trust fund, Highway trust fund, Military retirement fund, Civil service retirement and disability fund, Railroad Retirement Board, etc… > > Before 1968 the government was honest and trust funds were excluded from general government operations. > > But that changed with Johnson and his unified budget which has been used since 1968. > > If all trust funds are excluded (not just Social Security) Clinton had a deficit every year. Assuming that’s true (did you post numbers? sorry if I missed them) there’s a reason we don’t just exclude all these trust funds. It’s not as simple as you make it. Some functions of government are funded with dedicated taxes. But the spending on them is mixed. Often the general fund is used to subsidize spending on some of these functions, for instance, transportation. To divide every little dedicated tax and every little government expense in one year and declare that each must have a surplus or none of them do is not useful accounting. The government may choose to divert dedicated taxes to other needs whenever it wants to - there’s nothing special about, for instance, the gas tax vs. income tax. It’s just revenue. The government slapped a few cents on the gas tax for general revenue during Clinton’s term, in fact. That didn’t change the big picture of spending - it only mattered to three groups - road contractors, AAA, and Republicans who wanted to bash new taxes. A surplus means you spent less than you earned in a year. You’ve made a good case that this is more complicated than simply saying “surplus,” but it doesn’t turn a surplus into a deficit. ---
**Author:** ![tim-n-va](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tim-n-va/32/3001_2.png) [@tim-n-va](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tim-n-va)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/172 "2012-09-10T15:41:52Z")
I might have missed something in all of this. Can someone clarify/verify: What I think I got from this is that social security income (FICA) and expenses (benefits paid) are off budget (not counted for annual deficit numbers). However, since SS can’t just hold cash, any excess has to be invested in treasury bonds (and the treasury has to sell them to SS even if there is no need to borrow for on budget items). Does that mean that all of the SS trust fund (that some politicans say has been raided) is fully documented as treasury bonds and part of the government debt? ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/173 "2012-09-10T16:00:49Z")
> [@tim-n-va](#): > > I might have missed something in all of this. Can someone clarify/verify: > > What I think I got from this is that social security income (FICA) and expenses (benefits paid) are off budget (not counted for annual deficit numbers). However, since SS can’t just hold cash, any excess has to be invested in treasury bonds (and the treasury has to sell them to SS even if there is no need to borrow for on budget items). Does that mean that all of the SS trust fund (that some politicans say has been raided) is fully documented as treasury bonds and part of the government debt? As part of the “national debt,” yes. Which is not the same thing as money the government borrows from outside sources, which is “debt held by the public.” So it is possible to have a surplus and see the “national debt” going up. ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/174 "2012-09-10T18:57:57Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > Don’t get so caught up in the numbers and what buckets they fall in. We tend to focus too much on the minutiae of accounting and tend to forget that these numbers represent something real in the economy. > > Let’s construct a factually accurate and useful description of the government’s 1998 finances, forgetting trust funds and Treasuries, and all that stuff for a minute. And let’s put all revenue and spending in the same bucket, instead of having some ‘off-budget’. If we do that, this is what we find: > > In 1998, the government collected a total of approx 1.72 trillion dollars in tax revenue. It spent a total of 1.65 trillion dollars on various programs. In addition, the government incurred a liability of 99.2 billion dollars, in terms of promises made to future retirees (this is the amount that would go into a ‘trust fund’ if this were a private business). > > So in terms of the government’s overall fiscal soundness, it finds itself 29 billion dollars behind where it was a year earlier. It doesn’t matter whether that 29 billion was borrowed from future retirees, or whether it was borrowed from Chinese investors - it’s a new liability the government has incurred in that year. > > Now, let’s ask which number the government puiblishes is the most reflective of this basic situation: The White House’s number, which claims a $69 billion dollar surplus generated by the government in that year, or the ‘on budget’ deficit, which happens to be -29.92 billion? The latter, obviously. > > If we really wanted to be accurate about it, we’d simply treat the trust fund as another source of loans, just like the Chinese are, or Americans who purchase Treasuries for their retirement. > > In that case, you’d break out the finances like this: > > "In 1998, the government brought in operating revenue of 1.3 trillion dollars, and spent 1.33 trillion, leaving an operating deficit of 32 billion dollars. > > The 1998 Social Security trust fund raised 415.8 billion dollars, of which 316.6 billion was paid out to current retirees. The remaining 99.2 billion dollars was used to purchase U.S. treasuries, which will be cashed in as needed when the yearly operating budget of the trust fund starts running deficits." > > So if you think of the trust fund as a completely separate entity which just happens to invest in U.S. treasuries, then suddenly it’s no different than any other claimant - when China lends the U.S. money, it does so by buying treasuries, just like the trust fund. But Chinese money is not treated as revenue to be used to offset the deficit number, and neither should the social security trust fund. They are the same thing in the sense that every dollar in treasuries that are in that fund are a promise by the federal government to pay out that amount, with interest, from taxes raised in the year that the treasury is cashed in. > > We should always look at the ‘on-budget’ deficit to really understand the health of the U.S. government. The number the government pushes is, if not dishonest, highly misleading. Let me try to use simpler numbers to show your mistake. Suppose the government’s income was 200 and its expenses were 195. So it’s surplus is 5. Now suppose the general fund collected 95 and paid out 100 and Social Security collected 105 and paid out 95. So the general fund had a -5 deficit and SS was +10. 10-5=5, so so far everything adds up. What you’re arguing is that if SS sends its surplus to the general fund, that creates an extra -10 that has to be accounted for. So you subtract this new liability and turn a +5 surplus into a -5 deficit. But we know there’s a surplus overall, so how do we get a deficit by breaking it into pieces? The answer is that if you’re going to debit the Treasury for taking the loan, you’ve got to credit the trust fund for having made it. Let’s pretend for a moment that the trust fund is China, as you suggested. China has a surplus of 10, which it lends to America. America has a deficit of 10, which it borrows from China. Now how do you account for that? Do you say that China has no surplus, because it lent the surplus to America? If so, what about the bonds China got in return? Is their value 0? And if it is 0, how can you say that America has a debt to China, when you’ve just claimed that the value of the debt is 0? That’s what you’re doing when you subtract the value of the intragovernment loans from the overall budget. You’re saying they’re a real debit against the borrower, but not a real credit to the lender. You have to pick one. I don’t care how you do it, but you have to be consistent. ---
**Author:** ![LinusK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@LinusK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LinusK)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 7:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/175 "2012-09-10T19:35:37Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > So, to put it in terms of household budgeting (which I usually would insist is a bad idea when thinking about national budgets since AFAICT they’re very different animals, but in this case I think it can work,)– > > If I have $100 income for a week, and I spend $90 on groceries, I have $10 left. I could put $10 in my “petty cash jar.” And if I had a rule which said I could only spend money on groceries and any leftover had to go to petty cash, that’s what I’d do. > > But if I had a looser rule that said that, after groceries, any leftover is _owed_ to petty cash, but need not immediately be moved over into that jar, then I might write an IOU to petty cash for ten dollars, then spend the $10 in hand elsewhere. > > In this second case, I gained $100, and I spent $100, and I also have declared my intention to place $10 into petty cash at a later date. > > This does not sound like a deficit or a debt to me. It sounds like I broke even, and made a promise to myself to perform a particular action with my next week’s paycheck. I don’t owe anyone $10–not even myself–but rather, I have created an expectation that I’ll be saving $10 next week. > > Does this parallel seem accurate? If so, why would you call this $10 IOU a debt? I know it’s called an “IOU” for lack of a better term, but no one actually owes anyone anything. It’s just a declaration of what I intend to do with my future money. > > If I keep writing these IOU’s, though, eventually I’m going to have promised all my future paychecks to petty cash. That does seem like a problem. But it’s not a _debt_ problem. Does everyone agree that it’s a problem regardless of whether it involves a debt? And if it’s a problem, does it parallel a similar problem with the social security trust fund even if that problem also doesn’t involve a debt? > > Thanks for any help you can offer on this… It’s more like: I have two jobs. During the day I’m a doctor, and at night I’m a stripper. I have a rule that says I spend the doctor money on food and the stripper money on clothing. One day I have $50 from doctoring and $50 from stripping. BUT I want to spend $55 on food and $40 on clothing. What do I do? I’ve got a surplus in my clothing pocket and a deficit in my food pocket. How do I resolve the situation? Suppose I take $10 from my clothing pocket and replace it with an IOU for $10. Then I take the $10 and put it in my food pocket. Some people think because I’ve got an IOU in one of my pockets that I’ve transformed the overall budget from a surplus to a deficit. In fact moving the money from one pocket to another changes nothing. I still have a $5 surplus. ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/176 "2012-09-10T19:41:39Z")
> [@LinusK](#): > > It’s more like: > I have two jobs. During the day I’m a doctor, and at night I’m a stripper. I have a rule that says I spend the doctor money on food and the stripper money on clothing. One day I have $50 from doctoring and $50 from stripping. BUT I want to spend $55 on food and $40 on clothing. What do I do? I’ve got a surplus in my clothing pocket and a deficit in my food pocket. How do I resolve the situation? > > Suppose I take $10 from my clothing pocket and replace it with an IOU for $10. Then I take the $10 and put it in my food pocket. > > Some people think because I’ve got an IOU in one of my pockets that I’ve transformed the overall budget from a surplus to a deficit. In fact moving the money from one pocket to another changes nothing. I still have a $5 surplus. Exactly. It’s still true that you “owe” money, to yourself - actually, to your future need for clothing. In the real world, that’s old people who will expect the government to spend money on their Social Security. That’s a legitimate concern. It’s like borrowing against your retirement to pay today’s bills. It’s a problem, perhaps a big one, since there are going to be more old people and fewer young workers some day. But, as you note, it’s still a surplus. And more important - in at least one year under Clinton as I recall, maybe two, the surplus was within discretionary accounts and didn’t rely on SS taxes. Back to the analogy - both jobs earned their $50 that night, and you spent less than $50 on clothes and less than $50 on food. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 7:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/177 "2012-09-10T19:44:46Z")
If you keep doing that, your clothes pocket will have mori in IOUs than there is income to your food pocket. Is there an analogous problem that needs solving w.r.t. the national budget and social security? ---
**Author:** ![lance\_strongarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/87869e/32.png) [@lance\_strongarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lance_strongarm)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/178 "2012-09-10T19:50:09Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > If you keep doing that, your clothes pocket will have mori in IOUs than there is income to your food pocket. Of course. Nobody’s saying it’s a good way to run things. Though we can adjust the food or clothing budgets if we need to. For example, Congress has already increased the retirement age to mitigate the SS situation. It could do more. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/179 "2012-09-10T19:54:50Z")
“Clinton’s large budget surpluses also owe much to the Social Security tax on payrolls. Social Security taxes now bring in more than the cost of current benefits, and the “Social Security surplus” makes the total deficit or surplus figures look better than they would if Social Security wasn’t counted. But even if we remove Social Security from the equation, there was a surplus of $1.9 billion in fiscal 1999 and $86.4 billion in fiscal 2000. So any way you count it, the federal budget was balanced and the deficit was erased, if only for a while.” > **[The Budget and Deficit Under Clinton - FactCheck.org](https://www.factcheck.org/2008/02/the-budget-and-deficit-under-clinton/)** > > Q: During the Clinton administration was the federal budget balanced? Was the federal deficit erased? A: Yes to both questions, whether you count Social Security or not. FULL ANSWER This chart, based on historical figures from the nonpartisan... ---
**Author:** ![moonshot925](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f0a364/32.png) [@moonshot925](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moonshot925)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2012, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918/180 "2012-09-10T20:01:46Z")
I have found figures for federal funds surpluses/deficits. Federal funds are all funds except for trust funds. These are the figures that should be used because they most accurately show the surplus/deficit in the general operating budget. Federal Funds Surplus or Deficit(–) in millions of dollars: FY 1994 = –298,571 FY 1995 = –263,231 FY 1996 = –222,091 FY 1997 = –147,897 FY 1998 = –91,981 FY 1999 = –87,164 FY 2000 = 1,836 FY 2001 = –101,422 > **[BUDGET-2004-TAB-3-4.pdf](https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BUDGET-2004-TAB/pdf/BUDGET-2004-TAB-3-4.pdf)** > > 81.74 KB As you can see, Clinton had 7 deficits and a tiny surplus in FY 2000. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918.md?page=8) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/clinton-claimed-he-had-four-surplus-budgets-at-dnc-speech/633918.md?page=10)