[nanairo]

Obviously it's not a good idea. But I would imagine that the answer if you can't fill your pot holes is to raise taxes, not hope that the future will bring something better.

If during a boom you've cut taxes, why now that money is needed shouldn't you raise them again? Didn't Clinton leave office with a surplus? So if at that time you had a balanced budget, and now you can't even pay to fill your pot holes, and one of the reason is because of your massive cuts in taxes... wouldn't that suggest that to fix you books you need to raise them again?

[yummyfajitas]

Didn't Clinton leave office with a surplus?

No.

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&...

[nanairo]

Oh, you should fix wikipedia then: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton

which is based on this: http://www.cbo.gov/budget/data/historical.pdf

as confirmed by factcheck.org: http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/during_the_clinton_adm...

Actually this was (from the site you linked) show positive saving too (though I am not sure if it's relevant): http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&...

Could it be because you sent data for gross change in debt? Or maybe because those numbers include the extra interest rate paid by the debt (i.e. the government started saving, but the debt was so huge that the extra interests from the previous year compensated for it?).

Dunno, I am just trying to put the two pictures together.

[yummyfajitas]

That's debt held by the public, i.e. bonds. A lot of the debt is owed to old people through the SS system rather than to bondholders through the treasury.

Obviously one can debate the exact definitions of what should constitute debt, but I'm using the following definition: promises to pay out money in the future which will be politically very difficult to renege on.

If you want to look at debt held by the public, Bush had surpluses too (though not as large).

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/?chart_type=line&...