National debt

[longhornsg]

So today in my economics class, my teacher was going off on how Bill Clinton never had a budget surplus, because if he had had a surplus, the national debt would have gone down. His reasoning:

Revenues-expenditures=Deficit
Deficit+deficit=debt

I was pretty sure Clinton had a surplus, and I'm aware the national debt did not go down, as its rate of growth slowed down. Why is this?

[fsk]

Clinton did have a surplus and the national debt did decrease for a year or two.

However, INFLATION continued, even though the US had a budget surplus. The Federal Reserve continued to expand the money supply, even though the Federal government was running a surplus.

[forsmant]

Its funny how government debt is considered different from personal debt. The government is the sum of its people, so we all hold that debt plus whatever debt we have personally. I think the national debt is way more than we a being led to believe.

[Thomas Paine]

Budget surpluses occurred and the nation debt decreased due to divided government whereby the Democrats/Bill Clinton held the Executive Branch while Republicans held the Legislative Branch. Clinton's strategy of triangulation resulted in the Clinton White House and the Congressional Republicans trying to outdo each other in fiscal responsiblity. Regretfully, the worst thing that ever happened to this country in the last seven years was the election of a Republican President while the GOP controlled Congress. This eliminated for practical purposees the check and balance system thereby resulting in the doubling of the national debt in a mere seven years.