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Originally posted by azion
Fact: under Clinton, the US ran consistent budget surpluses.
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I dare you to back this up.
You can't, because it simply isn't true. We had a surplus in '99 and '00, and <b>that was it</b>. This is reported by the Congressional Budget Office, and I have the following numbers from them: a deficit of $255 Billion in '93, a deficit of $203 Billion in '94, a deficit of $164 Billion in '95, a deficit of $107 Billion in '96, a deficit of $23 Billion in '97 and a deficit of $29 Billion in '98.
If by "consistent" you mean "it happened a total of two times over his eight years in office, for a total of 25% of those years, during which the dot-com era was at its height and therefore boatloads of cash was flowing into the government via taxes and it therefore would have been pretty fucking hard to run a deficit", well then yes, the US ran consistent budget surpluses under Clinton.
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Conclusion: blaming the war on terror and on Saddam (the two are not one and the same) for the deficits is entirely and demonstrably false.
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That is stunning, considering that it isn't the challenge I posed. I also never said anything about Saddam, so I'm not sure why you're bringing it up in our discussion, as if I had implied that the two <b>were</b> one and the same.
What I'm asking is where it's proven that, to have a balanced budget, we <b>need</b> a "Tax-and-Spend Liberal".
My contention is that we can't entirely blame Bush for the current clusterfuck because a lot of other shit happened too.