Nation needs to get control of its debt

Michael O. Kreps, Las Vegas

Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2013 | 2:02 a.m.

The Nov. 26 letter to the editor “Bill is coming due for GOP’s spending” stated that the Republicans created huge deficits in order to destroy and cut major social programs and that it started with President Ronald Reagan. The writer says President George W. Bush took the Clinton surpluses, “$236 billion in 2000” and “gave huge tax breaks to the rich.”

Both of those statements are false. Go to the U.S. Treasury website and look up U.S. outstanding debt. Since 1950, there have been only two years, 1956-1957, in which the U.S. debt has gone down from one year to the next.

President Bill Clinton’s budget proposals took effect in October 1993, and his last budget ended in September 2001. During that period, the national debt never went down. In fiscal year 1993, the national debt was $4.4 trillion, and in fiscal year 2001, the debt was $5.8 trillion.

The way the public was conned was through a manipulation by the government accounting system in which they took Social Security excesses (called intergovernmental holdings) each year and applied it to the public debt (treasury bills, savings bonds and other financial instruments the public can purchase from the government). As a result, it appeared that our country was running surpluses when in actuality the government was borrowing money to create what looked like we were paying down the debt and not running deficit budgets. A detailed explanation is in an article called the “Clinton Surplus Myth,” written by Craig Steiner.

We as Americans should stop blaming each other’s parties and instead demand that the party in power should stop increasing our debt each year. We eventually will go bankrupt or taxed to death, or our money will be so devalued as to render it worthless.