Clinton's Smoke And Mirrors!!!

This article BEGINS with a premise that is total nonsense: "The U.S. Treasury website that tracks the U.S. National Debt proves there was never a surplus because the national debt went up every single year" -- http://www.letxa.com/articles/16 This statement proves that whoever wrote this has no idea of the relationship between defecit/surplus and the national debt. A budget surplus or defecit has to do with whether the government spends less or more (respectively) than it takes in that year. A surplus means it brought in more money than it spent, and a defecit means it spent more than it to. A budget surplus and a national debt increase can easily co-exist for two reasons: 1. The national debt ACCRUES INTEREST, making it grow REGARDLESS of whether the budget is balanced! In fact, even if you had a surplus of a few hundred thousand, for example, and put it all into the national debt, guess what? The INTEREST gained on the national debt would COMPLETELY offset that money, and it would still rise. The money put in would merely make it rise MORE SLOWLY (which is good, of course)! 2. Extra money from a surplus is not automatically 'dumped' into the national debt, so even if you had enough of a surplus to actually lower the national debt, but you ended up using the money for something else that was needed, like defense spending or a tax cut, would that magically negate the existence of the surplus money, just because the national debt rose? Of course not! In conclusion, claiming that there magically was no surplus BY VIRTUE of the national debt increasing is UTTER nonsense (although the national debt as a percentage of GDP spending did go down under Clinton), and the fact that one blogger says otherwise does not change that simple fact. Just so you know, I'm holding onto this response in case you get the bright (read: stupid) idea to try and push this claim again, despite its clear debunking. Face facts and move on; you're wrong.