There are lots of things about Bill Clinton that I liked and just a few things about him that I didn't, but seriously, I don't think even the most incompetent person in the world could have left us without a surplus in the era that the internet went mainstream.
The internet bubble didn't create the surplus, the "peace dividend" did. After the former Soviet republics became our BFFs, we promptly eviscerated our Cold War military. Combine that with some good growth in the economy (which obviously includes the tech sector) and some welfare reform that Clinton and Gingrich worked on together, and you got a nice surplus.
Throw in Bush-era tax cuts and two wars, and you can say bye-bye to that.
How much did our defense spending decrease? I know that we must have saved a ton of money when Clinton cut the Army nearly in half and when we decommissioned so many of our battleships. I've heard it said that we still spend more on defense than the next 10 countries combined, but I'm not sure what the numbers looked like before the cutbacks.
Edit: I did a little research and I was astonished to find out that welfare programs cost hundreds of billions of dollars annually. I didn't think that something like welfare would make up a significant percentage of the budget. It's over 10% of the federal budget if you include all of the programs that fall under "welfare."
Looking at the statistics, the amount of money spent on welfare didn't significantly increase or decrease during or after Bill Clinton was in office (until our current financial crisis.) I know that he was trying to find smarter ways to spend the money, such as by getting people back to work with education and employment assistance, but how could the reform have added to the surplus if the amount of spending wasn't reduced?
After looking at this site a bit longer, it looks like every category of spending increased each year he was in office. Even though spending increased, there were some areas where he slowed down the rate of increase, which is admirable. But if we increased spending in every area before, during and after his presidency, yet we produced a surplus during his presidency, doesn't that mean the surplus was created by the thriving economy, which was in turn thriving because of the internet boom? I'm not asking to be argumentative, I just don't understand how we can say that our reduced need for defense spending combined with welfare reform caused a surplus when we didn't reduce our spending in either category from 1993-2001.
Edit2: Since I asked a couple of questions. Wouldn't it be more productive to answer them instead of downvoting me? I wouldn't have asked them if I didn't genuinely want someone to explain things to me from their perspective. Why let someone continue to be wrong when given the opportunity to correct it?
Inflation + population growth will result in increases unless you make a conscious decision to cut. So if you leave something alone in the budget, you'd expect it to increase naturally over time. Even if there was no internet boom, and the budget continued to rise, tax receipts would still go up b/c the economy must grow to accommodate all those kids entering the workforce each year. If you hold the line on spending increases, not eliminate the increases but put them below the rate of growth, you'll have a surplus.
I specifically said not to focus on the wrong thing and yours is one of a string of comments that does exactly that. But I am glad you get and agree with my point.
I do agree with the point you were making.