DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Obama unveils $3.73 trillion budget for 2012 (merger)

**GarryPaterson** · 02-14-2011, 04:45 PM

tsquare, I'm almost sure that the difference is that the table you picked is only counting the "public" portion of the debt and is not counting the overall gross debt. That separation of the debt into 2 pieces was accounting shenanigans that started under Clinton (I think) and carries through to today.

United States public debt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The part of the couric article that I quoted doesn't include the 2009 budget. It was the debt numbers as of Sept 2008.

That might be... but it is the public debt that is most important.

And as much as I'd love to blame it on Clinton, the 'unified budget' spending the SS surplus (which no longer exists) began under LBJ.

02-14-2011, 04:45 PM	#26
GarryPaterson Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 354 Senior Member	tsquare, I'm almost sure that the difference is that the table you picked is only counting the "public" portion of the debt and is not counting the overall gross debt. That separation of the debt into 2 pieces was accounting shenanigans that started under Clinton (I think) and carries through to today. United States public debt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The part of the couric article that I quoted doesn't include the 2009 budget. It was the debt numbers as of Sept 2008. That might be... but it is the public debt that is *most* important. And as much as I'd love to blame it on Clinton, the 'unified budget' spending the SS surplus (which no longer exists) began under LBJ.
	Quote