The Only Modern U.S President to Balance the Budget and Post Surplus Consecutively: Bill Clinton.
Yes, not kidding in times where it seems impossible to think about surplus yet alone balance budget. Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001 did both!
As I watched the debt ceiling budget crisis that unfolder little less than a month ago, I was wondering since it’s happening so often, was there ever any President in modern America history who ever posted a Surplus Budget? or we have all been just so use to of this reckless behavior about not caring about our expensive exceeding the revenues and just spending our way into future with no accountability of the consequences we would be facing of racking up this much debt.
The last modern-day president to post a surplus budget in the United States of America was Bill Clinton, who achieved this feat in 1998, 1999, 2000, and 2001. He ended his presidency with a federal surplus of $128 billion in FY 2001, which was a 150% decrease from the previous president's deficit.
Bill Clinton was able to achieve a surplus budget by raising taxes on higher income taxpayers early in his first term and cutting defense spending and welfare, which contributed to a rise in revenue and decline in spending relative to the size of the economy. These factors helped bring the United States federal budget into surplus from fiscal years 1998 to 2001, the only surplus years since 1969. The U.S. has managed this feat only twice in the past 60 years – and both times involved raising taxes. President Lyndon B. Johnson managed to do it in 1969, and President Bill Clinton created a surplus that ran from the fiscal years 1998 to 2001, when he left office. Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy during his first year in office. He introduced higher top personal income tax brackets, raised corporate taxes, increased taxes on Social Security benefits, added 4.3 cents per gallon onto gas taxes and eliminated a number of itemized tax deductions. On the spending side, Clinton took advantage of the “peace dividend” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union to reduce defense spending from 4.3% of GDP in 1993 to 2.9% by 2000.
However, prior to the Great Depression America didn’t use to have this much budget deficit except for a few occasions like WWI or Civil War.
The U.S. was fortunate in the late 1990s to enjoy a buoyant economy that enabled Congress and the president to achieve a fiscal surplus. What the country needs now, in my view, is not more quick fixes but a sustainable pathway to stabilizing the national debt. That requires growing revenues and reducing nonessential spending in a responsible way.
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