except for sychophants and the easily confused.

When the Republicans won (not seized) control of Congress in the November, 1994 elections, Newt was asked how long he though it'd take to balance the budget. He guessed 7 years. Clinton went from speech to speech saying, "We can balance the budget in 10 years", "We can balance the budget in 8 years", etc. Meanwhile, his budget submission for that year had $200 billion a year deficits projected for years into the future. In short, Clinton had no clue nor plans to balance the budget.

There is reasonable debate as to whether we actually ran a surplus at all. Despite all of the news about crooked accounting in the corporate world, the government has been cooking the books for generations. Despite claims of surplus, the national debt has increased every single year. How can we run a surplus and an increasing debt at the same time?

As for the old "tax cuts for the rich" lie, Bill Gates and I both got the same tax cut last year - $600. The lion's share of the cuts passed last year have not even taken effect, so how could anyone other than a moron or a Democrat (pretty much the same thing 90% of the time) claim the $100 billion deficit was primarily caused by the cuts?

Of course, the future cuts will primarily benefit the people who are actually paying taxes. I know that must hurt the economic penis envy crowd who may actually have to buy votes with their own money for a change. Fat chance of that ever happening.

Several things have happened to burst the so called "surplus", including an economy that began slowing in Q2 of 2000 (who was president then?), leading to decreased tax revenues. At the same time, the war on terrorism has caused a big uptick in spending - some necessary but most not. Once Congress accepted the fact that we were going to run a deficit (and once Democrats got contol of the Senate with none other than Byrd as head of the Appropriations Committee), then the spending floodgates were opened full blast. Pork expenditures by both Democrats and Republicans are at record levels, but I guess in your worldview spending doesn't cause deficits, only tax cuts.

As for the accounting scandels, it seems some interesting facts are coming to light just today about how Citigroup and other bankers helped Enron cover up their debt starting in 1999 (who was president then?). Guess who's the big wheel at Citigroup? A: Clinton's former secretary of the treasury, Robert Rubin, the same guy who called Bush's treasury officials last year trying to cover up the Enron debt before Citigroup got stuck with several hundred million in bad debt. But wait, Lieberman is holding hearings on Enron! Surely he'll call for Rubin to testify, right? If you believe that, then you're gullible enough to believe the "Democrats are for the little guy" lie after all.