aplusmnt said:Tex said:You do have to give Clinton credit for being presidential in stopping the overspending and start allowing the SS surplus to start paying down the debt.
Wouldn't the proper thing have been to keep the Social Security money where it was intended for and just cut spending to pay down the debt? Why would you admire someone that just borrowed from Joe to pay Bob?
Social security money is paid in for a specific purpose all Clinton did was tweak the books to make one column look better while creating a debt in another one.
I can not believe you admire this type of financial procedure!
And did he really pay down the debt? If he did then why did the national debt increase while he is in office? He did not pay it down he just moved some numbers from one column to another as you mention in your post so he could claim he paid the debt down. But the figures do not lie, if he paid it down then the debt would not have increased under his presidency and IT DID INCREASE!
When people hear national debt they think it is money owed to China or some foreign country but in reality the majority of the national debt is owed to ourselves because people like Clinton borrowed it from the Social Security fund! That is where the majority of our debt is held, right here in America!
Let me correct you here. It has always been my pet peeve about how we characterize the national debt, the budget deficit, SS (and other trust funds) and its part in the argument.
The national debt has not decreased under Clinton, as you state. The national debt increased every year. We have not made progress on that regard by any recent president, certainly not in my lifetime. That is a problem. Some people say that the percent of debt compared to GDP is what is important, but that is just a comparative argument, not absolutist. I compare that to your credit card for a better understanding. The national debt is like the balance you owe. It has increased under every republican president in recent times, as you suggest, even under Clinton. When compared to the GDP, under Clinton, it went down, unlike the recent republican presidents since Nixon.
The budget deficit is a different thing. It is how much per year we add to the national debt. When you borrow more than you spend, you have a deficit. It is analogous with the amount you add to your credit card debt each year. We have had a budget deficit under every recent president. We continually add to the national debt.
Here is where the politician's trick came in: Taxes for SS have haven been running positive. In other words, up to now, the SS taxes have taken in more than what they have paid out. The politician's trick was to count that positive in the SS account as part of the way to figure out the budget deficit. In other words, they made up the definition of the budget deficit to include the SS surplus (or deficit but the SS account has had a surplus for a long time).
It is important to talk about how there is a SS surplus. More taxes are being paid in SS taxes than are being used in paying SS out to SS recipients. Internally, the government issues itself a piece of paper (if even that) which says it owes SS this amount of money that was overpaid. It amounts to a free loan to the government by everyone paying
SS taxes. It has the effect of making the interest rate lower on government debt. In other words, SS taxes are subsidizing the base interest rates in the U.S., including business loans. These loans do not get counted against the budget deficit (because they are a wash), but they do increase the national debt, as you correctly point out, aplus (good for you!!!). What has happened is not a decrease in the national debt, but an increase in the govt. accounts which hold debt.
SS is not the only trust fund that is raided for this fraud.
Clinton reversed the trend of increasing the debt when including the trust fund moneys (which as aplus accurately points out is not decreasing the debt). Bush has accelerated the debt in every way, including the trust funds, but even worse than that, has called himself fiscally conservative.
You can see the actual numbers here:
http://zfacts.com/metaPage/lib/OMB-2004-National-Debt-History.pdf
and the GDP arguments here:
http://zfacts.com/p/318.html
and the debt additions per president as a percent of GDP here:
http://zfacts.com/p/480.html
This doesn't even count the additional OBLIGATIONS that have been added. Additional obligations include things like buying a new car and putting the monthly payment on your credit card. It is something you have to keep paying for in the future, yet you get to drive the car today. Even if you ruin the car, the payment is always there. One example of this is the new prescription drug benefit.
Of course obligations will run out every thing else out of the budget after a while. It is like what has happened in the sub prime mess. People end up having more in payment obligations and it eventually eats up the whole budget, causing a foreclosure. In the case of our budget, it will take more responsible politicians to decrease the debt. The republicans have not been. Clinton wasn't either, but he came closer than all the republicans in recent time from Reagan on.