How can this be?
For he is the Kwisatz Haderach!
Sorry for the overly messianic reference, but it's been a while since I've made a good Dune reference. In fact, I don't think I've ever made a good Dune reference.
I'd actually be more impressed with the falling deficit if war spending was included, instead of being kept off budget. Being a simple minded libertarian, I look at the yearly change in the national debt to determine the true annual deficit. This way I don't have to worry about fancy accounting tricks that make it look like we have a balanced budget when we really don't. My method is very simple: How much money did we spend compared to how much we brought in? If the cumulative debt is going up, then we aren't balanced.
I know, it lacks nuance, but it works for my household, so it should work for our nation as well.
Looking at historical data, I see that the National Debt went up every year during the Clinton administration. Clinton's first budget was for the fiscal year ending 9/30/1994 and it resulted in an increase in the national debt of $280 billion. The debt climbs every year, although for the fiscal year ending 9/30/2000, the debt rose by a relatively small $10 billion. In all, over 8 years, Clinton added $1.8 trillion to the national debt, an increase of 41%. In comparison, over 5 years, Bush has added $2.7 trillion, an increase of 46%.
And there are still three more budget years to go. To be fair, I haven't accounted for inflation, and there is a war going on, but pardon me if I don't get excited by a declining deficit that's created by cooking the books when the actual debt is still climbing by roughly a half a trillion dollars a year.
Posted by Rich at September 13, 2007 10:19 PM | TrackBack