Memories

Someone referred me back to this article from the year 2000:

President Bill Clinton said Monday that the United States would pay off $216 billion in debt this year, bringing to $355 billion the amount of the nation’s debt paid down in the three years since the government balanced the budget and began running surpluses.
Clinton debt

In a written statement, Clinton said the $216 billion payment represented the largest debt paydown in American history, and he said that the federal government’s long-term debt is now $2.4 trillion lower than projected to be when he first took office.

However, the U.S. government still has a long way to go before it pays down the entire national debt, which now stands at $5.7 trillion.

I remember when Bush was considering his tax cuts, I was mainly concerned that we would stop making progress paying down the National Debt; concerned that Bush II would follow in the fiscal footsteps of Reagan and Bush I. Tax cut proponents spun me a line of crap about how we should be cautious about paying down debt too quickly — something about it making more sense to wait until the bonds came due or whatnot. Of course, now in 2007, we know that Bush II has pursued a particularly egregious form of Red-Ink Republicanism – spending and the size of government have increased under his reign; and yet, he did nothing to modify his tax cuts (or shrink goverment) when he was provided with evidence that the revenue from his tax cuts were insufficient to pay the bills.