need help with an surplus question-dittohead claims there was none

..admittedly I am not an economist and niehter is this dittohead I am arguing with. But he has a penchant for grabbing graphs that are misleading and, not being an economist, it can take me a while to see through it.

Basicly this guy is claiming that taking money out of trust funds created a surplus under clinton that didn't actually exist. It sounds like Boljum but not being an economist,....
here's what the guy claimed...

Total Federal Government debt at end FY 2003 was $6.8 trillion, according to the.Federal Debt Report. (which increased to $7 trillion by the end of calendar year 2003). Of that total, according to the Treasury Dept., $2.9 trillion was owed to trust funds, because the general government siphoned-off all surpluses that should have been kept in those trust fund accounts for specific use - - like employee and senior pensions. After siphoning off trust funds for other uses they placed non-marketable IOUs in the trust accounts instead of marketable assets - - with no budget to pay-back the trust funds.

Trust funds include many different special trust accounts: such as the social security trust fund, the federal employee retirement fund, federal hospital trust fund, railroad retirement fund, military retirement fund, employee life insurance fund, etc.

The practice of siphoning-off trust fund surpluses to spend on non-trust stuff is a way of camouflaging general government deficit spending, making it appear to be in surplus when it's really in deficit - - - or making it appear that a huge deficit is just a modest deficit. Politicians like this practice, but such is dangerous to the financial health of future retirees and our young generation - - and such undermines citizen trust in government..

Note the left chart showing exploding debt owed to trust funds - - an increase of $2 trillion during the past 12 years - - or 345% higher."

it's message 141 if you want to see the whole thing...

http://groups.msn.com/RushversusReality/rushvsreality.msnw?action=get_message&mview=0&ID_Message=108130&LastModified=4675469556295476985

He is correct about the fact that we did use the trust funds. This is a very long standing practice (Johnson instituted it) and we still do this. Thus Bush has made our situation substantially worse. We actually did have a very small surpluss, legitimaatly in the very last year of Clinton's rule. That is what all the discussion of the lock box was about. SS and Medicare surplusses were to be used to pay back those debts while only non SS and Medicare surplusses were to go to new programs and tax cuts. Clearly that didn't occur.

Why reason with him. Big waste of time.

An Early Show pre-9/11 interview (8/31/01);

http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/EarlyShow083101.html

And more Krugman;

http://www.pkarchive.org/economy/TaxCutCon.html

Feedback on Krugman? (post #3) :kick:

thanks!

it has been stated.

Who to believe? Hmmmmmm. Tough one.

From a September 8, 2000 press release:

"If the President won't support tax relief, he should join our pledge to return the surplus dollars gathered by overcharging taxpayers. If not through tax relief, he should return the money by paying off the national debt. And make no mistake -- if the money Bill Clinton overcharged is not returned to the taxpayers, it will fund more Washington spending. This Republican Congress is committed to returning the surplus to the American people. We again ask President Clinton to join us. The one thing we won't do is stand aside as this Administration overcharges American taxpayers to bankroll its addiction to Washington spending programs."

http://www.tomdelay.com/html/prelease.cfm?release_id=52 (emphasis added)

This piece of excrement evidently thought there was a surplus in 2000.

As long as there's a national debt... then the surplus is the CREDITOR'S money.

The unified budget numbers are bullshit. They imply the use of off-budget surpluses is revenue when they have to be repaid.

They should NOT be used at all.

Clinton managed about 90 Billion in true surpluses between FY99 and FY00. That's it.

Conversely Bush's TRUE FY04 budget deficit seems to be now about 799 Billion.