How often has the US Federal budget been in balance (or surplus)?

[Igel]

6. Or depressions cause unbalanced budgets.

Without information on what caused the depressions, all we're left with is post-hoc reasoning instead of causality.

Interestingly, the "great recession" is billed as the cause of the currently wildly out-of-balance budget, and the recession in 2001 started before the budget cuts that knocked the balance began. The debate for the reason to cut the tax rate is only half-remembered. It started out as "we don't want the surplus to feed the beast" but then quickly morphed into "tax cuts = stimulus."

Nobody believes that tax cuts = stimulus any more. Even if that was the reason given for the temporary FICA tax cut and several other tax reductions.