General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How the Republicans tore down our country [View all]NathanTheGreat
(78 posts)I'm pretty sure it was simply the wikipedia.org article on the national debt...those numbers are not in dispute...those are the numbers.
The CBO published those numbers, but when they report that we ran a surplus during the Clinton years, they are only giving you half of that number.
The public debt went down for a few years, but the public debt is only a part of the actual national debt. So, if you are only accounting for the public debt, you could say that we ran a surplus. It's congress' way of saying "look how good we did, we balanced the checkbook!"
Unfortunately, the surplus in our public debt was far overshadowed every year by the growth of the intragovernment debt.
It's perhaps splitting hairs...but the majority of people think that our national debt went down under Clinton (go ahead, ask) and that is absolutely untrue. They think that because of the "Clinton surplus" that everyone talks about.