Paul Ryan and GOP fiscal hypocrisy

To what extent does that affect the national debt?

I didn't say pay off. I said pay down. A decrease in the debt.

Clinton's deficits had a lesser affect on increasing the debt than Bush's larger deficits. That's all that graph showed. If Clinton had run a surplus, the graph would've shown negative growth of the national debt.

You've got to be kidding. My claim has been crystal clear from the outset.

Premise 1: If your debt goes up, you're spending more money than you're taking in.
Premise 2: If you're spending more money than you're taking in, you're running a deficit.
Premise 3: The debt went up each year of Clinton's presidency.
Conclusion: Clinton ran a deficit.

Your objections:

1. Something about national debt interest which I confess I still can't comprehend.
2. Adjusted for inflation or GDP, Clinton did run a surplus. This is true. But he still spent more money than he took in, and that's a budget deficit.
3. Social Security and trust fund surpluses contribute to budget surpluses. Legally, this is true. Mathematically, you've just borrowed more money, and that has to eventually be paid back. When the government declared a $236 billion surplus in fiscal year 2000, it literally borrowed $248 billion from trust funds and considered that borrowed money "income" which it counted towards a "surplus."

 

I didn't ignore your graph. I acknowledged that claim in my previous post. I simply say that it reflects numbers after adjusting for inflation. Adjusted for inflation, Clinton did run a surplus. In terms of simple arithmetic, he ran a deficit. He spent more money than he took in. That is a deficit, and there's no way around it.

Wait. I listed 3 premises and a conclusion. Which one do you disagree with?

I've already once acknowledged that Clinton ran a better budget than his republican predecessors. What I don't acknowledge is that Clinton ever ran a surplus. He didn't.

Okay, I've followed you this far. You said, "If a deficit budget has occurred, then money must be borrowed to pay the unpaid expenses. These obligations are added to the national debt."

So: How did the national debt go up every year of Clinton's presidency, then, if he ran a surplus?

 

Okay, I agree with that. My beef is that the government calls things surpluses even if we take on debt. I disagree with the government's method of calculating surpluses. Clinton's budget included borrowed money from trust funds as income, and used that to claim a surplus. It's like making $30,000 a year, borrowing $5000, spending $32000, and claiming a surplus of $3000.

Do you agree that a surplus is when you spend less than you take in?

I looked for your prior responses in advance of asking the question. The first time I asked this you said it was interest payments on the national debt. I don't really understand that. The second time, you said this: "Because the additional payments were small compared to the huge amount of the mortgage remaining. You only pay down the debt in increments, not pay off the debt. This is why you end up paying more in interest than you pay in principle on a long mortgage. And the National Debt is ver old and very big."

Which I still don't completely understand. If you're making additional payments to the mortgage on top of the normal payment, I don't see how the balance can increase without additional spending.

The third time I asked, LSUsupafan said it was caused because of the trust funds; that trust fund surpluses go by law into buying government bonds, which means the government is borrowing money from them that must be repaid. That is taking on debt. To claim borrowed money as income is dishonest.

 

I'm in favor of calling a surplus a surplus and a deficit a deficit.

Your factcheck link points to that, I think.

...I need to see some proof of that. I can understand how the debt load adjusted for inflation goes down, but I don't understand how the raw numerical balance of the debt can increase because of inflation. Is there a mechanism in place that automatically adds debt to the existing debt to account for inflation every fiscal year?

Wait. To the bolded: A high amount of debt or debt interest still owed?

Here's where we're going to disagree again. To the bolded: If I understand it correctly, a surplus would've decreased the raw balance of the debt, not merely decreased the rate at which the debt was growing. Even if you increase the debt by a tiny amount, even by a dollar, you're still running a deficit of a dollar.

And just to make sure I'm clear: You say that the debt went up despite Clinton running surpluses because of inflation. Correct?

As I understand it, some trust funds like Social Security are required by law to buy government bonds with any surplus they acquire. Social Security in particular did run a surplus for several years under Clinton, and that money was used to buy bonds, which (again, as I understand it) the Clinton budget reported as income. It was this "income" that contributed to the claimed surplus, and it is on that basis that I challenge it. Borrowed money ought not be counted as income.

 

Pretty much it. Clinton came within 18 billion dollars of a truly balanced budget in 2000 (by this I mean government revenues were 18 billion less than expenditures), but the monies that balanced the budget and created the surpplus were from the sale of treasury bonds to the SS. Public debt went down, gross debt went up.

And the notion that we must run surpluses to pay down the debt is foolish and silly. The debt will amortize over time. The debt payments are a required expenditure. As long as we keep making the minimum payments the debt will go away. The key is to stop spending more than we take in.