My eyes are shocked. I see that political posts are now allowed on Stinkfy. They were saying something about the surplus. Which I pointed out there was no surplus.

Ah, no. Not if you're talking about this thread... http://forums.syfy.com/index.php?showtopic=2357181&st=0&gopid=6978233&#entry6978233

I said this morning right after Annoyed58 made the first response that there never was a surplus, that during the so called Clinton surplus years the debt increased $281 billion. MBG came in and deleted my response then left hers talking about how popular scifi is.

Also I don't see anything in your responses about how there was no surplus, she must have deleted that as well.

EDIT: screw it, I reposted that info just to pizz her off.

Political posts have always been allowed, as long as you don't advocate a position from the right or conservative end of the spectrum.

You really can't have a discussion medium without allowing political content, since politics is the mechanism that we use to make decisions about how our society does things. As such, it affects nearly everything in some way.

They just don't want views they disagree with to be given a voice.

So you are saying the Republicans lied to us when they said they were going to cut taxes because the government couldn't be trusted with the surplus?

wiki.answers.com/Q/Was_there_a_national_surplus_when_Clinton_left_office

Was there a national surplus when Clinton left office?

Answer:


Yes, there most definitely was a federal budget surplus when Clinton left office.

In Clinton's final full fiscal year -- fiscal year (FY) 2000 -- the federal budget surplus was $230 billion. The public debt decreased by this same amount -- $230 billion.
Some claim there was not a surplus because the gross national debt increased by $18 billion in the same year, FY 2000. How could the gross national debt increase while the public debt decrease? The answer is due to trust fund accounting requirements, as is required by law. Trust funds (unlike the federal government itself) are allowed accumulate money, for purposes of the trust fund's future anticipated spending needs, and so trust fund accounting requires the trust fund money be segregated. This is unlike most people's personal accounting methods, so can cause confusion in interpreting the numbers. Following is why there was a budget surplus with corresponding decrease in public debt, while the gross public debt increased in FY 2000.

By law, the social security and medicare trust funds are included in the calculations of the budget surplus. In FY 2000, both trust fund accounts had more revenues than expenses. This means -- for example-- that social security's tax revenues (from the payroll tax) were greater than social security's expenses (payments to the retired beneficiaries.) The trust fund surpluses were about the same as the budget surplus. Trust fund accounting requires that surplus monies in the trust fund be segregated from the government's general account. This is so that the trust fund monies are held in reserve for payments to future beneficiaries, and cannot be spent willy nilly for building bridges, etc; however, the trust fund is allowed to earn interest income on any surplus it holds. Therefore, the trust fund purchases treasury bonds (or their equivalent) from the Treasury department.

The Treasury department therefore doesn't need to borrow that money from the public, which is why the public debt decreases by the same amount as the surplus. However, since the Treasury now owes this surplus money to the trust fund, the gross national public debt (which includes both the public debt and debts owed to the trust funds) does not decrease.

Oh for pete's sake, there was never a surplus. The only way you can have a surplus is if you bring in more money (taxes, investments, etc) then you spend. This government has only done that twice in its existence, both times within the first fifty years the US existed.

All your fancy nonsense explanation amounts to is this... The government says, next year we plan to spend $X trillion. The next year the government only spends $1/2X trillion, so they claim they have a $1/2X trillion surplus...

The fact that they only made $1/4X trillion that year, and therefore are actually $1/4X trillion in debt doesn't figure into their calculations.

Saying we had a surplus is like saying I got twenty dollars in my pocket. But all my credit cards are maxed out and im not making enough to cover my debts because I cant cut back on things I dont need. That was our federal government then and it thats way now but so much worse.