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Comment by hedora | Hacker News Reader

Clinton balanced the budget back in the 90’s. Biden and Obama’s terms were almost entirely defined by picking up economic disasters the previous administration caused. (2009 marked the beginning of the housing crisis, bank defaults due to deregulation and occupy wall street. 2021 was mid pandemic, after Trump spent years printing money with his zero interest rate stuff and tax cuts. He also fired the US funded team that China relied on for early pandemic detection and response.)

So, claiming this problem is bipartisan is nonsense. I’ll blame the dems for lots of stuff, but wildly inflationary fiscal policies and intentionally destructive economic policies aren’t on the list.

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Clinton came into office. At the start of his first term, he presented his plan to "balance the budget", which was to make small cuts for the next eight years, then large cuts thereafter - after his second term ended!

Then came 1994, and the "Contract With America". Republicans took over Congress. Their next budget made significant cuts then, not after Clinton was out of office. That's how "Clinton balanced the budget" - by a Republican Congress forcing him to live up to his words.

Lest you think this is a partisan statement, let me note that Republican Congresses never balance the budget when a Republican is President. But the historical record is that it wasn't just Clinton's achievement - a Republican Congress had to make him do what he wanted to make the next president do.

That was an annual joke back then. Every year they'd present a budget that had spending increases in the first couple years, "balanced" by cuts in the "out years" 5-10 years in the future. Of course, the next year there would be a new budget that invalidated all the future cuts but kept the increases that had already taken effect.

Then at some point they just stopped pretending to balance it at all, and no one seemed to care much.

How did you come to the conclusion that Clinton balanced the budget?

When have any of these presidents successfully pushed for reducing the federal deficit during their tenures? Any actual reductions to the debt you’ve seen?

What’s causing you to focus on presidents rather than congressional actions?

How do you think fiscal policy keeps getting passed through congress when there’s largely two parties that have to agree to get it done?

The deficit was gone in Clinton’s last term, and there was a surplus for four years. Cheney then said “surpluses are evil” and that was that. Sustained surpluses over time would wipe out debt obviously, but we’ve only been able to do that for one term.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD

Because the deficit was positive between 1997 and 2001, during Bill Clinton’s second term as POTUS.

Here’s federal debt:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN

A surplus in the billions for a few years did not meaningfully change a federal debt that’s in the trillions. Further, the surplus that paid down public debt was completely wiped out by social security and Medicare liabilities during that time

Better than nothing you might say, but not the structural change needed to get the US out of the hole

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I’ve been consistently discussing the federal debt through this whole thread. Your accusations seem trollish, disregarding my larger point about fiscal policy/debt and the context of the article (the debt), so I won’t be responding further. Good day, sir

This was your original question:

> How did you come to the conclusion that Clinton balanced the budget?

Having a surplus means your budget is balanced and then some.

> When have any of these presidents successfully pushed for reducing the federal deficit during their tenures? Any actual reductions to the debt you’ve seen?

You specifically mention deficits, and a surplus leads to an actual reduction in debt.

> What’s causing you to focus on presidents rather than congressional actions?

The same congress that was in charge during surplus was more than happy to put us in high deficit again.

> How do you think fiscal policy keeps getting passed through congress when there’s largely two parties that have to agree to get it done?

Gridlock is a great way of not spending money. More to the point: Clinton was ok with cutting spending as much as he was with raising taxes. He treated the deficit as if it were actually important unlike Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden.

If the budget is balanced and there is a surplus, then you will eventually have zero debt. Eventually. That means you have to stick to it, and not get sabotaged by low-effort conservative fiscal policy.

The story of US policies since the 70s is the republicans fuck some shit up, democrats almost fix it or rarely sometimes actually fix it, then people say the democrats are bad with money because reasons, and then the republicans come back in and fuck it up even more.

I mean, after the con that we call Reaganomics how are we still entertaining this bullshit? Do we truly never learn?

I should also add: Trump 2 inherited a stable economy with massive investments in US manufacturing.

Early indications suggest he has already ruined it with tariffs, erratic jailing of skilled laborers and gutting of the government programs and agencies that were supporting the investment in the first place. The dollar has dropped 10% since inauguration day, inflation is way up and the deficit is ballooning.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/C307RC1Q027SBEA

https://www.exchange-rates.org/converter/usd-eur

In the 90s, the percentage of young to old was vastly different.

SS/Medicare will bankrupt the country without reforms.

What non-USD-denominated liabilities do SS/Medicare have? Those would be required in order for the country to go bankrupt.

Social Security is a trust fund and is set up so that it cannot lose money.

Congress has been stealing money from the fund for years, but that’s not Social Security’s fault. Claiming it needs reform is like blaming account holders after the president of the bank embezzles their deposits.

If only the US had prepared for this statistical event instead of handing out trillions in tax cuts.

Yeah; no one could have seen this coming back in 2025.

ss/Medicare are still owed by general budget, so they are still technically in surplus. But yet, eventually they will be in deficit (well, at least social security, Medicare isn’t capped on income so is more stable). SS could be fixed quickly by uncapping the limit on income that it is applied to.

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