Illusion Trick
What accounting trick was used to create the illusion of a budget surplus during the Clinton administration?
When the Clinton administration announced they had passed a budget that created the first budget surplus in decades, some group dissected the budget and found that it was an accounting trick; some budget items were moved off-budget, to the exact amount of the fictitious surplus. I remember that announcement coming out, but I don't remember who exposed this fraud or the details of the budget trickery. Anybody have that information?
Time and time again, anyone reading the mainstream news or reading articles on the Internet will read the claim that President Clinton not only balanced the budget, but had a surplus. This is then used as an argument to further highlight the fiscal irresponsibility of the federal government under the Bush administration.
The claim is generally made that Clinton had a surplus of $69 billion in FY1998, $123 billion in FY1999 and $230 billion in FY2000 . In that same link, Clinton claimed that the national debt had been reduced by $360 billion in the last three years, presumably FY1998, FY1999, and FY2000--though, interestingly, $360 billion is not the sum of the alleged surpluses of the three years in question ($69B + $123B + $230B = $422B, not $360B).
L8r
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