DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - Interesting post from the comments section at Reuters

**tinetttstation** · 08-22-2011, 04:55 AM

If they would just balance the budget, the economy would improve even if we didn't pay down the debt. With it finally in balance, the economy would grow, and as it did so, the relative size of the debt would slowly shrink compared to the GDP. What's frustrating is they actually balanced it back in 2000. If we had kept it in balance, we would have seen a shrinking debt as the economy expanded.

They didn't balance anything in 2000. They counted surpluses from the Social Security and other accounts as revenue. They had to issue IOU's for that money, but it never went on the books. In reality they were somewhere in the ballpark of $80 billion in deficit. There was no surplus, there was no balanced budget.

08-22-2011, 04:55 AM	#15
tinetttstation Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 470 Senior Member	If they would just balance the budget, the economy would improve even if we didn't pay down the debt. With it finally in balance, the economy would grow, and as it did so, the relative size of the debt would slowly shrink compared to the GDP. What's frustrating is they actually balanced it back in 2000. If we had kept it in balance, we would have seen a shrinking debt as the economy expanded. They didn't balance anything in 2000. They counted surpluses from the Social Security and other accounts as revenue. They had to issue IOU's for that money, but it never went on the books. In reality they were somewhere in the ballpark of $80 billion in deficit. There was no surplus, there was no balanced budget.
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