How Democrats Turned the Surplus into Deficits

Most Democrats love to argue that President Clinton handed President Bush giant surpluses when Bush took office. They cite the CBO's forward-looking revenue projections from 1999 and 2000 at the peak of the Internet bubble (remember Nasdaq 5100?). They conveniently forget that by the end of 2000, we were in a recession and had the CBO recalculated its decade-out projections, we would have been showing massive deficits. Of course, the same is true with today's situation. From the WSJ:

For the sake of comparison, let's look at the Pelosi-Reid fiscal record over 10 years. In January 2007, the CBO projected a $379 billion surplus over the next decade. Now, after four years under Mrs. Pelosi and Mr. Reid, and two years of Mr. Obama in the White House, the 2007-2016 projection is a deficit of $7.16 trillion.

By the Democrats' own argument, they just squandered a surplus into unprecedented deficits.