I responded to a typical weasel comment with enough facts and frankly enough words to turn the truth about the Clinton presidency into an article. Here’s the typical weasel comment:
This post is a bunch of lies.. Clinton left a surplus
Just can’t get away from stupid people, can I?
U.S. National Debt
09/30/1993 – $4,411,488,883,139.38
09/30/1994 – $4,692,749,910,013.32
09/29/1995 – $4,973,982,900,709.39
09/30/1996 – $5,224,810,939,135.73
09/30/1997 – $5,413,146,011,397.34
09/30/1998 – $5,526,193,008,897.62
09/30/1999 – $5,656,270,901,615.43
09/30/2000 – $5,674,178,209,886.86
09/30/2001 – $5,807,463,412,200.06
These are official Treasury Dept taken from the Treasury’s site. The numbers between 1993 and 1999 are here and the numbers from 2000 to 2001 are here.
I want you to notice, you deluded dumbass, that every single year of the Clinton presidency the national debt went UP. THAT IS A FACT. In the very real world, Bill Clinton never left us with so much as a penny of “surplus.” Every single year of Slick Willie’s presidency, we got more debt and then more debt.
Bill Clinton assumed office in 1993. Two years later, in 1994, the people were so angry at the fact that “Clinton gold” turned out to be Iron Pyrite that they voted overwhelmingly for Republicans in the greatest historic asskicking of all time. Clinton lost both the House and the Senate to Republicans, and in fact never got either back for his entire presidency.
Bill Clinton said “the era of big government is over” in January 1996, which put the kibosh on liberal ideas for the rest of the Clinton presidency as Clinton governed as a moderate Republican from that point on.
In 1997, the Taxpayer Relief Act was passed by the Republican House and the Republican Senate before being signed into law by Bill Clinton. As a result of those REPUBLICAN TAX REFORMS, federal income tax revenues surged just as they ALWAYS surge when the American people are allowed to keep more of their own money and invest that money far better than bureaucratic government EVER has or ever WILL. And as a result, we actually briefly got to a federal budget surplus. Because of Republicans and because “the era of big government was over” and because Democrats had had their asses kicked and ONLY because of those things.
It’s interesting. Republicans controlled both the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate when we actually got our “balanced budget.” And yet historically somehow the mainstream media gave Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party ALL the credit and the Republican majorities that had actually passed all the legislation that created that balanced budget zero credit. It’s particularly amazing given the fact that Barack Obama controlled the White House, held a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, AND controlled the House of Representatives his first two years in office, but the failure of the Obama economic policy is blamed on the fact that for two of Obama’s first four years Republicans held the House. Basically, Democrats can never be blamed and must be given all the credit; whereas Republicans cannot receive any credit and must be given all the blame.
The same people who constantly lecture the Republicans about “obstructionism” somehow never recall the years when George Bush was confronted with massive Democrat obstructionism. Obstructionism, was, of course, good and noble when Democrats were blocking virtually every single thing Bush tried to accomplish. It is only evil if Republicans try to block anything their messiah Obama wants to do.
Now, sadly, 9/11 happened because Bill Clinton left America weak and blind. Why did America get attacked on 9/11? Because Bill Clinton showed so much weakness in 1993 in Somalia that a man we would one day know very well said:
“Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world. … As I said, our boys were shocked by the low morale of the American soldier and they realized that the American soldier was just a paper tiger. He was unable to endure the strikes that were dealt to his army, so he fled, and America had to stop all its bragging and all that noise it was making in the press…” — Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden began to prepare for a massive attack on America. Oh, yes, he and his fellow terrorists hit America again and again: they hit the World Trade Center for the first time in 1993. In 1996 they hit the Khobar Towers where hundreds of American servicemen were living. In 1998 two embassies in Africa (Kenya and Tanzania) were bombed and destroyed by terrorists. And in 2000, terrorists hit and severely damaged the U.S.S. Cole. And Bill Clinton proved bin Laden’s thesis correct by doing exactly NOTHING.
Meanwhile, all throughout the Clinton presidency, al Qaeda was preparing to strike us. They brought in all the terrorists who would devastate us with their second attack on the World Trade Center on 9/11 2001 during Bill Clinton’s watch.
America was both weak and blind due to Bill Clinton’s gutting both the military and our intelligence capability. And of course, being blind and unable to see what was coming would hurt us deeply:
Author James Risen won the Pulitzer Prize on Tuesday for his much ballyhooed New York Times report last December that revealed President Bush’s previously secret terrorist surveillance program – a revelation he uncovered while researching his book “State of War.”
In the same book, however, Risen makes an equally explosive claim about President Clinton’s relationship with the CIA – which his editors at the Times have so far declined to cover.
Upon taking power in 1993, Risen reports, the Clinton administration “began slashing the intelligence budget in search of a peace dividend, and Bill Clinton showed almost no interest in intelligence matters.” The agency cutbacks combined with presidential disinterest took their toll almost immediately.
“Over a three-or-four-year period in the early-to-mid 1990s,” reports Risen, “virtually an entire generation of CIA officers – the people who had won the Cold War – quit or retired. One CIA veteran compared the agency to an airline that had lost all of is senior pilots . . . “
After Clinton CIA Director John Deutch cashiered several senior officers over a scandal in Guatamala, the situation got even worse.
“Morale [at the CIA] plunged to new lows, and the agency became paralyzed by an aversion to high-risk espionage operations for fear they would lead to political flaps. Less willing to take big risks, the CIA was less able to recruit spies in dangerous places such as Iraq.”
And so we were hit on 9/11 and were completely blindsided by the attack because Bill Clinton gutted the military and the intelligence budget leaving us weak and blind. And of course our spending skyrocketed because of the DotCom economic collapse that Bill Clinton left for George Bush that happened on Clinton’s watch but gutted $7.1 trillion in American wealth (almost as much as the Great Recession, btw) and which collapsed the value of the Nasdaq Valuation by fully 78% of its value as Bush was still trying to clean all the porn that the Clinton White House had left on the White House computers. And so Bill Clinton handed George Bush a massive recession and like whip cream on top of his economic disaster he handed George Bush an even more massive terrorist attack.
But, hey, don’t worry. Barack Obama is making all the same mistakes that Clinton made and then a whole bunch of even dumber mistakes that Clinton didn’t make.
Anyway, as you keep hearing that Obama will pave the streets with gold because Bill Clinton paved the streets with gold, please realize #1 that Clinton hardly ever paved the streets with gold and #2 realize that Barack Obama has not and will not govern the way Bill Clinton governed.
Do you know what bothers me the most about Obama’s reelection? It’s that we have entered a profoundly different reality as a nation. Barack Obama did NOT get reelected because he gave us a strong economy. And both the polls before and AFTER the election document that many of the people who actually voted for Barack Obama believed that Mitt Romney would have given us a better economy.
Obama’s economic policy was a complete unmitigated disaster. But what you need to understand is that a terrible economy makes for good politics for Democrats. Because the worse the economy gets the more that increasingly amoral Americans will demand a stronger government safety net and welfare state. Such that the worse Obama does economically the better he and Democrats will actually fair politically.
The beast is coming.
Tags: 9/11, Bill Clinton, budget surplus, Clinton presidency, DotCom, era of big government is over, Nasdaq, national debt, Osama bin Laden, recession, Republican revolution
Start Thinking Right 
November 13, 2012 at 9:34 am
Thank you, Michael, for not going away…
November 13, 2012 at 10:54 am
Uh yeah, hey, If you want me to stop saying stupid obnoxious things, i will. But don’t go away. (heh, see how long I can live up to that.)
November 13, 2012 at 10:11 pm
Millie,
Thanks for that encouragement.
The world is a better place with your working in it, too, btw!
November 14, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Bill Clinton had the good fortune to becoming president during a time period when we had a strong economic growth in the world, largely because of the development in computer technology, where the United States is strong. Despite this, he has increased the country’s national debt! Well, what can you say?
In addition, he prepared the ground for the 911-attacks by being too passive against a growing Islamic terrorism.
The question is which of the two is “the worst president ever”, Clinton or Obama.
November 14, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Penumbra,
Good to hear from you again!
Here is an article that considers the “Clinton surplus.” He has some very interesting things to point out INCLUDING that the national debt never went down during the Clinton presidency.
You mention the strong global economic growth that Clinton benefitted from. Let’s recall what that was. Recall the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. That created an awful lot of fear and uncertainty in the world and that was why the US economy began to go south on George H.W. Bush. Obviously, it took some time for the dust to settle so investors and businessmen could see the opportunities that slowly began to emerge from Reagan fulfilling his vision. In fact it turns out that the economy was surging back to life just as the American people were deciding to dump Bush.
But as an example, the US entered a recession and clearly had exited that recession prior to Clinton assuming office in January 1993:
See that? The US was surging as Clinton took office, but the media had already trained the American people to blame Bush for everything bad and praise Clinton for everything good. Just like today with Bush II and Obama.
The recession was declared “officially over” in December of 1992 – obviously BEFORE CLINTON ASSUMED OFFICE. In waiting their sweet time to release that FACT, the media stole the 1992 election for Bill Clinton. Think of it: “Oops. Here’s some news that we really knew about 20 months ago but couldn’t tell you about until after the president was defeated.”
Interestingly, Bill Clinton raised income taxes in 1993 and turned a golden goose economy into a wretched turkey, such that in November 1994 the Republicans utterly destroyed Bill Clinton and the Democrat Party a landslide that saw the House switch hands for the first time in 40 years and the Senate likewise came under GOP control. And in 1995 when the Republicans assumed office Bill Clinton acknowledged the defeat of liberal ideas and said, “The era of big government is over.”
Interestingly, it was not until the GOP House and Senate passed the Taxpayer Relief Act in 1997 – which REDUCED TAXES and in particular significantly cut the capital gains tax rate – did the US economy start to roar.
Bill Clinton had little more to do with being credited for the successful Republican agenda than that he was politically in no position to stop it as the House and Senate remained firmly in Republican control throughout the Cinton years. But there is absolutely no question that it was REPUBLICAN POLICIES that led to the healthy economic years following the GOP assuming control of the government beginning in 1995 and continuing throughtout the Clinton presidency.
And yet somehow Clinton ends up getting ALL the credit for the good economic years and the Republicans get no credit at all. When in reality Clinton mainly just signed the stuff the Republicans passed.
It’s amazing to see how much power the media has in framing elections and political discussion.
November 16, 2012 at 11:58 am
Thanks for a comprehensive reply, Michael!
It just shows how “much” I know about U.S. economy and history. But it also confirms my firm belief that liberalism, as socialism, is a path that leads straight to the destruction of our societies.
Have a nice weekend, my friend!
November 16, 2012 at 12:08 pm
Penumbra,
Let no one think for a second that I was “correcting” you. I was merely trying to provide concrete substance to what you knew.
I only wish more Americans could understand the US economy and history as well as you clearly do!
American liberalism is most assuredly a form of socialism, every bit as much as we have seen in the European tradition (from communism, to fascism, to modern “European-style” socialism). Modern European socialism is a hybrid of communism, fascism, and nanny-state crony capitalism. Government builds more and more power, and business is viewed as a threat that must be limited, contained, regulated and controlled. And then the state makes all kinds of backroom deals with business that allow the politicians to keep accumulating power while a select few get to profit from the limited “capitalism.” That’s my view of it.
I wish you a great weekend in Sweden, my friend. May God go before every step you take.
October 14, 2013 at 8:44 pm
Clueless people will fall for your shenanigans .
October 15, 2013 at 9:33 am
John Hanson,
If that’s true, then YOU would fall for them. Because there is absolutely no question that you are completely and utterly without a clue.
Do you know what a clueless person is? It is somebody who sees an article loaded with facts and arguments but who – because he or she is totally clueless – doesn’t think he or she should have to RESPOND with facts or arguments of his/her own. Nope. Your stupid opinion trumps all the facts and all the truth in the world, because you’re a liberal and facts really don’t matter to you.
Get lost. I don’t like to waste my time on clueless moral fools who literally have nothing to add but truly stupid opinions.
January 20, 2015 at 11:06 pm
Your blog came up on a search of Clinton budget. But first I have to say VERY clever slight of hand here! You badgered the “typical weasel comment with enough facts and frankly enough words” to turn his comment about the Clinton surplus into a discussion a discussion about the debt ….. and the debt does not have a direct relationship to the surplus at all! LOL.
You got him so confused with the 1500 words and the numbers that he probably didn’t realize that the “deficit” is related to the surplus and not the debt. You offered no deficit numbers. And as Clinton proved you can have the increasing debt that you chart, but still have a surplus! Debt-deficit sound close enough and both have negative connotations ….. so he never knew you were talking about the debt when he was talking deficit and surplus.
Clever.
January 21, 2015 at 12:40 pm
Sam,
I won’t call YOU “clever” because you are merely a hypocrite. You attack me for some alleged sleight of hand that you never actually delineate, and infer that “I offered no deficit numbers.” Well, where are YOUR deficit numbers, you punk?
You are so beneath ignorant it is unreal on a number of fronts. Bill Clinton did not do ANYTHING to reduce the deficit UNTIL THE REPUBLICANS KICKED HIS ASS IN THE MIDTERMS AND HE SAID, “THE ERA OF BIG GOVERNMENT IS OVER.” It was REPUBLICANS in the House and Senate that reduced the budget. And all Bill Clinton did was realize that his liberalism had failed and went along with the Republicans enough to let their work succeed so he could take credit for it.
Kind of reminds me of Obama last night taking credit for low oil prices WHEN YOU TELL ME WHAT OBAMA DID TO REDUCE THE PRICE OF OIL. BECAUSE HE DID NOTHING!!!! Obama did everything he could to stop the fracking that reduced the price of oil. Obama is STILL doing everything he can to drive up the cost of oil so his solar garbage won’t be the utter joke that it currently is.
What I pointed out in this article is that the debt under Bill Clinton NEVER WENT DOWN. It continued to go up and up and up under his presidency. That is a FACT.
Fiscal Year Debt in Millions
10/1992 – 9/1993 $4,411,488
10/1993 – 9/1994 $4,692,749
10/1994 – 9/1995 $4,973,982
10/1995 – 9/1996 $5,224,810
10/1996 – 9/1997 $5,413,146
10/1997 – 9/1998 $5,526,193
10/1998 – 9/1999 $5,656,270
10/1999 – 9/2000 $5,674,178
10/2000 – 9/2001 $5,807,463
It is a FACT that the debt went up EVERY SINGLE YEAR UNDER CLINTON. PERIOD.
And so while Republicans – after kicking Clinton’s and Democrats’ asses and forcing Clinton to repudiate tax and spend liberalism – DID force Clinton to reduce his spending, the fact of the matter is that they weren’t able to force Clinton to go far enough. So a significant part of the “deficit surplus” under Clinton is/was smoke and mirrors.