Barack Obama

...Let’s briefly go back to the beginning of Bill Clinton’s era 1993 - 2001. In 1993 Clinton signed into law, with the help of Al Gore’s senate tie breaking vote, The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, a.k.a. The Deficit Reduction Act of 1993. This is no small achievement: every Republican in Congress voted against this bill. Sound familiar? It, together with a progressive tax structure resulted in what we all can freely look up as historical annual budget surpluses at the end of the last millennium....

Obama inherits
January 20, 2009 10,626,877,048,913.08 8th

It appears quite normal to see that debt is increasing. Clinton saw an increase of $1.6T. Bush II saw an increase of $4.9T. Bad huh! Unfortunately, that's the picture we're told, but it's missing one key element that will inflame that last number. This is the part of the analysis that’s always left out. CBO baseline budget and economic outlook (pg 17) forecast from 07/01/2000 estimated a budget surplus (2001 - 2010) of $5.7T, in 01/31/2001 was revised out to 2011 to be $5.6T* and on 12/28/2000 Clinton announced that Total Public Debt could be paid off by end of the decade...assuming tax policy and economic conditions remained unchanged and positive. <wiki: Change in debt position since 2001> 2012 DU thread