“The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that in the absence of new legislation, budget surpluses would be sufficient by 2006 to pay off all of the federal debt available for redemption. What would happen to the budget after that? If current laws that control revenues and outlays remained unchanged, the government would begin to accumulate a stock of nonfederal assets (such as stocks and bonds), which could grow to almost $3.2 trillion by 2011.”
http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=2731&type=0&seque...
Update:Bush stated that tax cuts were needed because the budget surpluses indicated that the government was "storing up" money. There were budget surpluses for four straight years under Clinton.
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/09/us/bush-tax-plan...
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/02/24/national...
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,967...
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/27xx/doc2727/entire-rep...
Denying that there were budget surpluses is denying reality. You may disagree with the accounting method but it was the same method used to calculate Bush's record-setting deficits.
Answers & Comments
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Because as soon as we were projected to take in more revenues than we spend, Republicans went crazy, and completely ignored the national debt (which they should have been paying down with the projected surpluses).
"CNBC and the Congressional Budget Office have found that the 10-year outlook for the nations deficit has deteriorated by almost $8 trillion. There was a time .. all the way back when George Bush was president in 2008 .. when the CBO outlook projected a $247 billion SURPLUS for 2009 through 2018. Now we are looking at a $7.4 trillion deficit.
So what happened? The CBO says that 57% of the increase was due to a decline in revenue. More specifically - social security, which accounted for a "huge part" of the revenue change. Social Security was expected to have a $2.3 trillion surplus from 2009-2018. Guess we know how that turned out! Add to that the economic "stimulus" bill, increased funding for the war in Afghanistan, extended unemployment benefits and .. interest on the debt! Now we can add Obamacare to that list."
Don't confuse a "projected surplus" with an ACTUAL surplus. However, we have leveraged that projected surplus into a very REAL debt we have to deal with soon.
The Global War on Terror occurred, and we spent hundreds of billions across the middle east in two separate wars, paying off muslim extremists, dictators, and upgrading our entire military devastated by the clinton years of neglect to the defense of our nation. There is a reason that there was a surplus. The money that should have been spent upgrading and maintaining the military and infrastructure to this country was hoarded and allowed things to rot.
Two recessions (loss of revenue), Governments response to those recessions (tax cuts, stimulus bills, bailouts), the Iraq / Afghanistan Conflicts & additional social spending (Bush passed his Medical Drug Bill, the new Healthcare legislation and some others).
Republicans produced those budgets that led to a surplus, but we still had Debt. There is a huge difference. Moving Social Security funds to the general budget is hardly a solution.
You also have to realize that the Tech boom led to those revenues and we went into recession after 9/11, so it's not as simple as the Democrats like to claim.
2007 was a record year for revenues, so how can you possibly claim the tax cuts led to lower revenues?
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/963757/po...
The CBO is non partisan yes, it is like a computer that gives you and answer based on the data that is input. The saying is $hit in $hit out. The information and assumptions provided to the CBO was from the Clinton administration, not exactly unbiased.
They passed Medicare Plan D without any plan to pay for it. This and the wars destroyed our country.
Too many Liberals and Democrats to support...
a little thing called the Iraq war happened....
consrvatives did not admit to budget surpluses because there wasnt one. it is impossible to have a surplus when we were and still are spending more money then we have.
0bamanomics is a failure.liberalism is a failure. socialism is a failure.0bama is a racist.