| ▲ | xmichael909 3 hours ago |
| Bullshit on the lazy “both parties are the same” framing. Bill Clinton actually balanced the federal budget and ran a $236 billion surplus in 2000. His 1993 deficit-reduction package passed without a single Republican vote. You just keep eating up the Republican bullshit... |
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| ▲ | SloopJon 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| It's overly simplistic to say that Clinton balanced the budget. While the 1993 bill raised taxes and reduced defense spending, there would not have been a surplus without further cuts driven by Republicans in 1997. There was also the dot-com boom, which of course wouldn't have happened without Al Gore inventing the Internet. |
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| ▲ | wat10000 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The pattern is extremely clear. During my lifetime, the deficit had increased under Republican presidents and decreased under Democrats. This has held steady for decades. That’s the more important thing than the question of exactly why one of them managed to get it to zero one time. | |
| ▲ | tdhz77 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The mental gymnastics one must do to believe in what they write is unbelievable. The answer lies right in front and you skipped over it with grace. |
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| ▲ | happytoexplain 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I agree that Republicans are probably worse on this topic, but as far as I can tell, the parties are closer to parity on this than they were in 1993. The Democratic party doesn't seem have people like Bill any more. |
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| ▲ | jatora 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| okay? and Obama? and Biden? why are you pointing back 30 years ago for this argument I wonder? |
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| ▲ | badlucklottery 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Obama inherited a housing crisis and two wars. Biden had to deal the tail end of a pandemic and the financial fallout of that. Not saying both couldn't have done much better on the budget but, if you compare them to Bush and Trump, they honestly do look quite competent. | | | |
| ▲ | wat10000 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Both reduced the deficit substantially during their time in office. | | |
| ▲ | missedthecue 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | While literally true, this is not very insightful/useful information because Obama entered office at peak deficit spend to counter the mortgage crisis, and Biden entered at peak deficit spend to counter COVID lockdowns. Because both the mortgage crisis and COVID eventually ended, deficit spend came down from those peaks without either president meaningfully reforming the budget. Structurally, the budget has gotten worse every year since the 1990s. In large part for reasons not attributable to presidents. For example the number of old people (as a % of the population) in the US has doubled since the '90s, thus ballooning medicare and social security spend. Without cutting eligibility to those programs, increased spend was always going to be an inevitability due to seismic underlying demographic trends. Second, the persistent deficit has led to now $2T in annual interest expense. Again, not something an administration can simply "reform" or back out of; that is now structural inherited spend. |
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