When Clinton left office there was a surplus,Bush has run the debt to the highestin US history why?

Answer 1

Because Clinton was a democrat and Bush is a republican and republicans have always and forever overspent and ran the deficit out of sight. It is their way. Just look at the record to see the facts.

Answer 2

Close Gungrave, but no kewpie doll.... The (Republican) Congress under Clinton managed to lower the RATE of debt increase...
We have heard the term “budget surplus” bandied about for the past 8 years… Here is the real so called surplus: The National Debt (not to be confused with the annual budget deficit) since Sept. 1987, 16 years of Republican and Democratic “budget management”.
Year National Debt
1987 $2,350,276,000,000 (read that 2.35 Trillion)
1995 $4,937,982,000,000 (read that 4.94 Trillion, or over doubled in 8 years)
2003 $6,789,437,000,000 (read that 6.79 Trillion, a 14 percent increase in the next 8 years)

So It only increased 14% instead of doubling… so that is the “surplus”. Sorry but the Presidents and their yes men politicians and media toadies have been flat faced lying to the public about the “budget surplus”.

Todays National debt today is just under 8 Trillion.

Answer 3

there was no surplus when clinton left office, the economy was entering as recession. 911 and the war strongly affects the deficit. the tax cuts were across the board not just for the rich. Ask most dem leaders rich to them is $40,000 dollars and up, if they'll even answer you. Ask these politicians and other ppl who are wanting to raise taxes (who are all rich) how much in taxes they pay. They have there money hidden in stocks and overseas account. Tax records were made public for bush and kerry in the last presidential election. kerry made more than bush, but paid less in taxes. so im tired of hearing this hipocritical bs.

you also have to realize we have the strongest economy we have had in ages...better than your beloved clintons or any other dems. not long after april a report was put out that the government actually took more tax revenue than ever before, so shut up about tax cuts. you givr people there money and they will make more money for the government.

now its true bush hasnt found a bill he didnt like and thats why republicans lost the midterm election they got out of control with spending, but dems are as much to blame they like to spend OUR money like it is going out of style to

Answer 4

The economy Clinton inherited when he took office was pretty solid. Reagan's voodoo economics had worked. The tent cities went away and there was real and meaningful employment out there. All of that was dieing under Bush Sr. The more he got away from Reagan's voodoo economics the more it hurt the economy. Clinton took office with a retroactive tax increase the first in our countries history. Probably not even legal. That hurt the economy however Clinton was rescued by the dot com boom. Every other aspect of the economy continued to decline with alarming and increasing speed.

The dot com bubble burst. That was a major contributer. We had become heavily dependent on IT for jobs. If you didn't work in IT you worked for IT related work or you worked in the housing field. Starting during the Clinton years and snowballing through each of them then through Bush jr's terms more and more IT jobs have been outsourced. More and more H1 visas have been brought in by companies that could easily find Americans to do the same job but wanted the cheaper H1 visas instead. Today an unbelievable percentage of the US workforce is in the housing industry.

This is very scare for several reasons. One being that it is an area that is notoriously fickle. The second is that it is really a service type of industry. Unless you are selling US homes to people overseas it takes a job and money to purchase a home. Mortgages are fictional condensations of a payment. So banks pay off the cost of building the house to the contractor in the assumption that somebody whether it be the origional buyer or in a foreclosure pays off at least what it took to build the home. Housing crashes in a big way then the banks will take a serious loss.

Which brings me to what has saved the Bush economy. Just as Clinton was saved by the dot com boom, Bush was saved by debt spending. Liberal credit had been given during the dot com time and continued on through the dot com crash then through the IT crash. So as a nation we still spent but it was debt spending. People racked up amazing debts that were not possible until somewhere in the middle of the Clinton administration.

The lack of jobs, I have no idea how anybody can paint the current job market as healthy. If they counted the chronically unemployed they'd have a jobless rate close to %10 with many people hiding out in college and or disability to survive the current job market. That doesn't happen in a healthy economy. This has led to record bankruptcies being file. Foreclosures on auto's and homes in record numbers are used by banks to reduce taxes while they jack up interest rates to increase already obscene profits. Many people have had to settle for wages half of what they were making a few short years ago. Others have no work at all.

The last piece of the puzzle is social security. It was what caused the "surplus" that was claimed under the Clinton years. During the IT boom and dot com boom people's wages increased dramatically. When they did so did the social security taxes they were paying. Social security however until Clinton was not counted as income as it was expected to be paid back out eventually and not supposed to be used as part of the federal budget. That changed under Clinton to produce a fictional surplus. Not once in my lifetime has the US Government had a balanced budget much less a surplus. If you take social security taxes out of the picture then Clinton not only didn't have a surplus he had the same trend of record deficets that every other presidency had going back at least 50 years.

Bush hasn't corrected this illusion and technically illegal scam of counting social security taxes as federal income. Bush continues to spend Social security surplus on normal budget expenditures, something that started happening under LBJ. The big difference is that wages are down. People that made $100k a few years back are lucky to be working for $50k if at all. Many have taken early retirement as the job market is so tight and the the first waves leading up to the baby boomers and some of the older Baby boomers are retiring now. This combined with record disability filings has eaten up this imagionary surplus. The war in Iraq has compounded this deficet and all concept of fiscal responsibility has long since been abandoned by both parties. We can choose our flavor of debt spending but we have no party actually interested in changing things. You cannot change this without reducing spending. DRASTICALLY reducing spending. Raising taxes does not help. People can't make it as it is. Raising taxes only sinks more families, crushes more small businesses and chases away more industries overseas. This compounds the problem and doesn't reduce debt. It just adds more too it. Continueing to spend and ignoring the debt as the other party does obviously doesn't work either.



So the first asp

Answer 5

Clinton did NOT leave a surplus (and this is coming from a fence rider). Clinton DID balance the budget two years in a row, running a positive deficit...a deficit is a year's balance, NOT in comparison to the word DEBT, which is a lifetime balance. We've been in debt since the Korean War.

Answer 6

Because the war has cost this nation $1 trillion , Bush cut taxes on the rich and he never saw a bill he didn't like to sign .

Answer 7

Clinton did NOT leave office with a surplus. He was the first president in a long time to actually decrease the nation's debt, but did not leave with a surplus.

Answer 8

Ah, there's the rub. Why would a so-called conservative bury the country in debt, is he just stupid, no, he has people pulling his strings. The only logical explanation is to raise the debt so high so that all the programs have to be cut. These people draw no lines, they will practically bankrupt the country to get their way. Don't underestimate them, hopefully they have underestimated the American voter.

Answer 9

Because Bush has to help with the opium crop in Afghanistan since we took over the country. Since 2001, the number of acres of opium poppies went from 4000 to 400,000. The taliban should be hailing Bush as a hero. He has done more for their profits than anything or anyone else in the country's history. And look at the fine legacy he is building in Iraq! All of our tax dollars down the rat hole with Bush!

Answer 10

Bush had to finance his two disastrous invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq. He had to fund his big brother police state. He had to help out his rich brothers and sisters with huge tax cuts. He also had a rubbetstamping Congress that gave him wasteful bills that he happily signed.