OT-The party of hate picks a leader

Well, if we did, I don't remember it, or I didn't see it. I'm only here about half the time.

Do you remember the thread name or a keyword? Maybe I can find it on your name and "Clinton"?

I'll give it a try.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress
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Well, this isn't the link that I remember from last time, but it's a good clear one from a solid source:

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To me, that looks like the debt is going up every year, including during the Clinton years. If that's a surplus, it's a definitino of "surplus" that I have not previously encountered.

Dave Hinz

Reply to
Dave Hinz

I just looked. All I found was you and Gunner making the assertion, with no support whatsoever.

Did I miss something, or is that about it?

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

See my next (already posted) message.

Yeah, by the time you posted this I'd already sent a specific link. If you don't see it there, it's here:

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What years was Clinton president again? Can't tell by the amount of debt going down, so either the treasury department is wrong, or Clinton was lying when he said there was a surplus.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

When Gunner posts such stats I generally ignore them, because he gets them from right-wing blogs and websites and they're usually b.s. In this case, I wonder what led you to this figure. Anyone sophisticated enough to go looking for the numbers probably is sophisticated enough to know what's wrong with the ones you refer to.

In fact, the national debt went down both in actual dollar terms (adjusted for inflation) and as a percent of the GDP during Clinton's second term. For almost all sensible purposes, the national debt as a percentage of GDP is the meaningful number.

But you don't even have to use that to show that the debt went down. Again, not knowing what your background in this is I'm not sure what to use as illustration. You could look at the debt figures published by the White House from their own OMB figures:

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In Table 7.1 you'll find the columns that reflect the gross federal debt and one that shows "Held By Federal Government Accounts." You subtract the latter from the former.

The reason you do that is that the "Held By" is that "debt" is acquired any time the federal government issues a Treasury security -- including the ones that the government issues to itself. In all honest discussions of the national debt, except those made by economists who are looking at the several different definitions of national debt for various reasons, the figures used are those of the "debt held by the public."

Here are the definitions from the U.S. Treasury Dept.:

===========================

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FAQs: National Debt THE NATIONAL DEBT

What is the National Debt?

The term national debt refers to direct liabilities of the United States Government. There are several different concepts of debt that are at various times used to refer to the national debt:

  • Public debt is defined as public debt securities issued by the U.S. Treasury. U. S. Treasury securities primarily consist of marketable Treasury securities (i.e., bills, notes and bonds), savings bonds and special securities issued to state and local governments (State and Local Government Series securities, or SLGS). A portion is debt held by the public and a portion is debt held by government accounts. *

Debt held by the public excludes the portion of the debt that is held by government accounts. *

Gross federal debt is made up of public debt securities and a small amount of securities issued by government agencies.

Debt held by the public is the most meaningful of these concepts and measures the cumulative amount outstanding that the government has borrowed to finance deficits.

Additional statistics on the public debt may be found in the Budget of the United States and the Economic Report of the President, and on the Congressional Budget Office website. Daily, monthly, and quarterly updates on the public debt may be found on the Financial Management Service (FMS) website.

===============================

Using the definitions from Treasury, look at the figures from the same website you pointed to:

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See what's going on? The intergovernmental holdings (that's money we owe to ourselves ) went 'way up, but the debt held by the public went down.

So, why are you looking at the gross debt, including interdepartmental issuances of Treasury securities? Most people wouldn't even go looking for that. Did you follow some blog or website there, or did you find it with Google?

I'm reasonably sure where Gunner got it. Suffice to say, it's not a real figure. It's one that someone would use if he wanted to tell us that black is really white. That's Gunner's hobby.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

I found supporting evidence with the same numbers from a left-wing blog, but didn't post it in preference to this.

Well, let's see. It's the freaking treasury department. The numbers keep going up, regardless of who is the President. Seems pretty obvious that there's not a real surplus for the Clinton years, or the numbers would go, you know, _down_.

What, specifically, do I have wrong? Are the numbers not really going up? Are those not the years Clinton was President?

That is _NOT_ a surplus, that just means (arguably) that spending increased at a slower rate than inflation. But it's still a real deficit.

Except for the "were we above bugdget, or below budget" sensible purpose, which is what you and Clinton claim in the face of the actual numbers. He lied to you. You believed it. It's OK, he's a really, really good liar. But the numbers are right in front of you, Ed. I know it's disheartening to find out that someone you trust is lying, but it's hard to argue with hard numbers from a reputable source.

Good, because it didn't.

I see "gross federal debt" continuing to rise throughout. "Held by federal government accounts" is money (SS, primarily) that is already spent, and isn't an asset. You have fallen into Clinton's lie by thinking that you can spend that money _again_ to show a surplus. You can't. Try it with your checkbook and see how well spending the same money twice works. This is precisely the enron-esque accounting trick I was talking about.

yes, like money set aside for social security. For instance.

Google. I don't have a hidden agenda, I'm not some Rove operative or something, Ed, I googled for historical debt and found that, despite clinton's claims, the debt continued to get worse during his tenure.

The numbers are black and white, Ed. If you think you can spend allocated funds twice, then yes, there was a surplus during the Clinton years. Me, I don't think that it works that way.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

OK, now this is the part where you go on to say that gunner's right, it's a really really good thing that the rate of debt increase has gone up under bush's term. Or, that the second derivative isn't really going up at all.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

Actually, no, this is the part where I say "claims that Clinton had a surplus are a lie", which was my original point, continues to be my point, and isn't related to what Gunner says. He's more than capable of making his own points, and doesn't need me to try to make them for him.

Or is this one of those "you must agree with everyone I disagree with on everything, since I disagree with you on this thing" assumptions? But yes, on the whole, I usually agree with Gunner.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 18:31:09 GMT, the inscrutable "Tom Gardner" spake:

Yeah, those North Carolinians are mean bastids, too.

Reply to
Larry Jaques

WMD:

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Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

We'll take that on faith.

Jim

Reply to
jim rozen

Well, I don't have time to go into this in detail, so I'll just say my piece briefly and move on.

When the SS finances and the rest of the federal budget were combined in

1969, any possibility of making unequivocal evaluations of the total budget evaporated. The two SS funds that show up as current debt, when Treasury bonds are bought for the fund, have an obligation that has nothing to do with whether there are bonds to pay for it. It is, with or without the bonds, a future debt upon the nation, one that will come due as SS needs arise. Calling it an addition to "current debt" is an accounting slight of hand.

So there is a strong argument that counting those bonds as part of the debt is bogus. The obligation is statutory; whether it comes from buying the bonds back, or directly from future revenues, IT HAS TO COME FROM THE SAME FUTURE TAXES EITHER WAY! The bonds are really meaningless pieces of paper, in other words. Both SS "trust funds" are a fiction.

At the same, the revenues used to buy them have to be balanced by a debt of some kind, so it makes neat accounting to fold it all up in a revenue/expense accounting balance by counting the bonds as debt. However, the revenue has nothing to do with future debt, either. It is current revenue, used to pay current expenses. So that part of the accounting balance is bogus as well. The revenues are there; they came in; they are real. Trying to relate them to future SS payments is the part that is not real.

That's why the Congressional Budget Office says that these transfers of debt amount to "reallocating costs from one part of the budget to another; they do not change the deficit or the government's borrowing needs." [they] "have no effect on the economy or the government's future ability to sustain spending at the levels indicated by current policies."

And that's why, as I pointed out in my last message, the Treasury Dept. and nearly everyone else doesn't count those bonds.

Now, you may still insist on counting them. That's fine, then you'd have to say that the national debt accumulated *more slowly* during the late '90s than at any time since 1972. That fact is true either way.

Also, you brushed off the idea of counting debt as a portion of GDP, as nearly everyone does. They do it for a good reason: because debt has no economic meaning whatsoever EXCEPT AS a portion of GDP. The percentage burden upon the economy only has meaning as a portion of GDP. Period. There is no other meaning to it at all.

So, I'm done. You may accept these things or not; it doesn't matter, because everyone who makes the key economic decisions that affect the national debt, and SS, and so on know them perfectly well, and these are the basis on which those decisions are being made. And that, I suppose, is as close as we're going to get here to the bottom line.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

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Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Reply to
Gunner

Gunner, let's see if you understand the b.s. you've dumped here in those links. Tell us, in your own words, how issuing a Treasury bond to the Social Security funds increases today's debt, or tomorrow's debt, or any debt at all. It's simple, you can do it in one paragraph.

Or you could, if it were true. Try it. You'll find it enlightening.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

Their website seems to show they do count those bonds, Ed.

Yes, that we can agree on, and it shows that there was no surplus during Clinton's years, contrary to his habitual lying about it.

You're either taking in more than you're spending, or you're not. What the rest of the economy is doing doesn't change a red number into a black number.

The polarity of the number is what's in question here, Ed, not the proportion.

All I can tell you, Ed, is that Clinton claimed to have a surplus, and in each of those years the amount of debt went up. If my checkbook balance gets more negative on any given month, I don't call that a surplus.

Reply to
Dave Hinz

I made no comment Ed. I left it up to the readers to make up their own minds. I suspect you dont like it very much when folks do that.

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Reply to
Gunner

Clintons "surplus" was largely based on expected revenues stretched over a 15 yr period. The implosion of the dot.com bubble, and the recession pretty well took care of that.

"Im a very rich man today, because of all the people that may give me a check in the next 15 yrs"

Oddly enough..that doesnt sound particularly comfortable does it?

Gunner

Rule #35 "That which does not kill you, has made a huge tactical error"

Reply to
Gunner

Their website shows you several columns of numbers, and then it explains what they are. What they SAY about it is this:

"Debt held by the public is the most meaningful of these concepts and measures the cumulative amount outstanding that the government has borrowed to finance deficits."

As the Treasury department said above, the way he (and almost everyone else) counts the debt, he was exactly right.

Again, it's a question of whether you understand the numbers and want to say something sensible about them, or you want to ignore the facts that the population is increasing, the economy is growing, and inflation is diminishing the value of your indebtedness -- which are the ways economists say we "grow out of the debt."

It's like getting a 10% property-tax increase after 20 years, when your income has increased by 20% and inflation has increased by 15%, and wringing your hands over how you're getting killed by tax increases.

Or it's like having the population grow by 2% and the economy grow by 3%, and having Bush say that a 1% increase in the number of jobs is "job growth."

None of those things -- national debt, tax amounts, or number of jobs -- mean anything as "growth," except as they relate to inflation, population increases, or growth of the economy: GDP.

No, Dave, debt as a percentage of GDP is the only meaningful way to measure it.

Your checkbook isn't about debt. It's about current accounts. If you want to look at current accounts, look at current surpluses or deficits, not at accumulated debt. Debt shows up in your statement of net assets, not in your checkbook.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

In other words, you have no idea what it means, right? Then why did you post the links, if you don't understand them?

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

And here, I thought you had no comment.

The surplus was on current accounts, Gunner. Look at the budgets. Explain them away, if you can.

-- Ed Huntress

Reply to
Ed Huntress

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