Who was the last president to balance the budget before Clinton?

[TNDemo]

nm

[baldguy]

1. Eisenhower

[kentuck]

2. I think it was LBJ?

and he used SS funds to do so?

[Psephos]

3. Nixon

1969 - budget surplus $13 billion

[madokie]

4. Was he dipping into Social Security?

to get that number I wonder.

[kenfrequed]

7. Err...

The only reason it worked for Nixon was that Johnson enshrined the practice of borrowing from social security as part of consoloidated budgeting to cover the massive debt-hole caused by the increasing involvement in Vietnam.

Nixon and Johnson deserve very little (if any) credit for this mythical surplus.

[Psephos]

12. That accounting scam has been true for every president since LBJ.

Or, to be more accurate, for every Congress, for it is Congress that actually passes budgets and revenue/spending legislation.

The idea that Nixon actually presided over a budget surplus is as laughable as the idea that Clinton did. If government were forced to use the same accounting standards as business (known as GAAP, or Generally Accepted Accounting Principles), no budget would have come anywhere near balance in the past 45 years.

Here's an intro for anyone interested.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generally_Accepted_Accounting_Principles

[Dogmudgeon]

5. Carter, I think, ran a surplus in 1978

I'm not certain, though; I'll have to check.

--d!

[old mark]

10. You are correct - the one recent president who does not get credit for it

actually did it.

m

[Psephos]

13. No Carter-era budget was ever in surplus.

The highest Carter deficit was $136.6 billion in FY1980 and the lowest was $83.1 billion in FY1979. The Carter budgets added $482.8 billion to the national debt and averaged yearly budget deficits of $120.7 billion.

Perhaps you are thinking of Carter's proposed FY1980 budget, which he claimed would produce a balanced budget. However, Congress passed a considerably different budget.

[WeDidIt]

6. Andrew Jackson. n/t

[kentuck]

8. Here's a link that might help?

http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/09/27/clinton.surplus/

<snip>
"Like our Olympic athletes in Sydney, the American people are breaking all kinds of records these days. This is the first year we've balanced the budget without using the Medicare trust fund since Medicare was created in 1965. I think we should follow Al Gore's advice and lock those trust funds away for the future," he said.

[DeSwiss]

9. Hope this is useful.....

[Winterblues]

11. I wonder how authentic this truly is.

If accurate it pretty much tells the story of modern day Republican leadership. From Reagan forward they were guilty of complete fiscal malfeasance. This chart should be used by democrats in Campaign ads OVER & OVER & OVER & OVER & OVER again.