Clinton's "Surplus"

With all the recent news about Obama’s budget plans, I want to set the record straight about something.

I keep hearing liberals boast, “Well, when Clinton left office he had a surplus, and look what Bush did to it…”

Clinton didn’t have a surplus.

Slick Willy changed the rules of accounting while he was in office to make it look like he had a surplus.

Clinton decided to use the “cash” based accounting numbers, which look directly at cash that came in vs. cash that went out. This type of accounting is fine for very small businesses or personal checking. Federal law requires businesses with revenues over $1 million/year to use “accrual” based accounting. Accrual accounting measures income and expenses when they accrue. For example: if I borrow $10,000, cash accounting says that I have $10,000 on my books and doesn’t take into account that I owe someone that money. Accrual accounting says that I have $10,000 + -$10,000 in debt = $0.

During the final 4 years of Clinton’s budget, they reported a $559 billion surplus. When the government audited the numbers (using accrual accounting), there was actually a $484 billion deficit.
http://www.usatoday.com/money/2006-08-02-deficit-usat_x.htm

Budget Deficit

Obama recently announced that he plans on cutting the deficit in half by the end of his term.

His team said that he plans on reducing the federal deficit to $533 billion by 2013.

Does anybody else see a slight problem, considering the budget deficit in 2008 was $455 billion?
http://www.treas.gov/press/releases/hp1213.htm

Are we supposed to be impressed that he is going to more than double the deficit and then cut it in half by the time his 4 years are over?

Quite a lofty goal there, Mr. President.

Obama's Spending Extravaganza

I’ve put off making a post about Obama’s spending bill because I am just so absolutely disgusted by it. I could go on for hours about how unbelievably stupid it is, but I’ll be brief.

It’s not a stimulus package. I wish people would stop calling it that. I’ve heard estimates from 7-10% of the bill being spent in 2009. If this is supposed to stimulate our crappy economy, why are we waiting to spend 90% of it? It’s actually just a giant bill of pork to pay off Obama’s buddies who helped get him elected. I love how Obama keeps saying, “There are no earmarks in this bill.” Yeah, not if you redefine the definition of ‘earmark’ to suit your agenda. Earth to Obama: the entire bill is pork.

During Obama’s campaign, he told the American people repeatedly that he would be able to pay for every dime of his plans, so where is the $800 billion cut in the budget?

Democrats like to pretend that republicans are into ‘scare tactics’ so I’m curious what they think of Nancy Pelosi’s recent comments. “If we do not pass this economic recovery package, 500 million Americans will lose their jobs every month.” For those of you who aren’t good at math, there are approximately 300 million Americans. Every one of us will lose multiple jobs every month until Obama’s spending bill is passed. Sounds a lot like a scare tactic to me.

So why the rush to pass the bill, Ms. Pelosi? If only 7-10% of the bill is going to be spent this year, why are the democrats pushing for it to be passed so quickly and thoughtlessly?