How much of a surplus (money) did President Clinton leave before leaving office?
Presidents dont leave surpluses when they leave office. Presidents dont leave deficits when they leave office. Presidents tend to get credit (or blame) for these things but the truth is that the congress is much more responsible for spending than any president. Partisans on either side of the isle like to use these issues for political leverage but the ugly truth is that our government spends our money like it’s going out of style. I personally wish they would stop finger pointing long enough to actually fix the problem.
Clinton ran deficits throught all 8 years of his term, and one can go to the US Treasury Department and looking through the history of the total outstanding debt throught Clintons term. (http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np) Every year Clinton was in office, the total national debt continued to climb. How Clinton managed to claim a surplus was that while the general operating budgets ran deficits but Clinton borrowed from numerous off budget funds to make the on budget fund a surplus. For example, in 2000, Clinton claimed a $230B surplus, but Clinton borrowed $152.3B from Social Security $30.9B from Civil Service Retirement Fund $18.5B from Federal Supplementary Medical insurance Trust Fund $15.0B from Federal Hospital Insurance Trust Fund $9.0B from the Federal Unemployment Trust Fund $8.2B from Military Retirement Fund $3.8B from Transportation Trust Funds $1.8B from Employee Life Insurance & Retirement fund $7.0B from others Total borrowed from off budget funds $
