I am debating that it is. This person says the following:
Chris added this item as a Clinton/Gore economic accomplishment: "Paid off $360 billion of the national debt." I think the whole list is tangential to the Al Gore article; even a President has only limited scope for influencing macroeconomic performance, let alone a VP. As to this specific item, though, it would suggest to me that the total accumulated national debt was $360 billion less in January 2001 than it had been eight years earlier. Is there support for that assertion? Clinton/Gore inherited a huge annual deficit from 12 years of Reagan/Bush. The federal budget can't be turned around on a dime; the 1993 tax increase began the process of bringing the budget into balance, and the annual deficit declined each year thereafter, but it was still a deficit until the last year (maybe last two years) of the administration. I find it hard to believe that the tail-end surpluses equaled the total of six or seven years of deficits plus $360 billion. If the statement means, for example, that a FY 1992 deficit of $280 billion became a FY 2000 surplus of $80 billion, it would be more credible, but that's covered in the next item and wouldn't constitute paying off $360 billion of the national debt. JamesMLane 06:21, 9 Jun 2004 (UTC)
My original comment addressed this point, when I stated that the current wording "would suggest to me that the total accumulated national debt was $360 billion less in January 2001 than it had been eight years earlier." I think that's the most natural interpretation of the passage I deleted. Your citation confirms what I thought -- that the sentence, if so interpreted, is false. Instead, the basic patten is what I suggested -- that Clinton/Gore inherited an accumulated debt and a huge annual deficit; that the annual deficit was reduced during the first years of the Administration, but was still there, so that the accumulated debt grew rather than being paid off; that the budget moved into surplus only toward the end of the Administration, so that the reduction of the accumulated debt that occurred was less than the increase that had occurred in the first years of the Administration, i.e., Clinton left the debt larger than he found it.
This isn't a slam at Clinton (still less at Gore). Twelve years of unprecedented fiscal irresponsibility under Reagan and Bush couldn't be reversed in a moment. The federal government is like a huge ocean liner that takes time to change direction. But the correct statement of the Democrats' accomplishment is what's in the next item: "Converted the largest budget deficit in American history to the largest surplus." In this context, running a surplus naturally involves paying off debt. The $360 billion item adds nothing except confusion.
If, for some reason, you see value to the reader in re-inserting it, then it would have to be qualified so that the article correctly states the overall course of the debt during the Clinton/Gore years. It would read something like: "Paid off $360 billion of the national debt (although total national debt at the end of the administration was still approximately $1.5 trillion dollars higher than at the beginning)." (You can find the change in the debt as between any two dates at
http://www.publicdebt.ustreas.gov/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/~www/opdpen.cgi -- the $1.5 trillion figure is the increase from January 1993 to January 2001.) If you re-insert the sentence in that form, I'll defer to your desire to include it, but I think the article is better off without it. JamesMLane 15:37, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)
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Government record clearly show just what the statement says. If any of you can give insight, I would appreciate it!