GOP's Hensarling Gives Republicans Credit for Clinton Surpluses

February 1, 2010
from Perrspectives

Still smarting after his budgetary beat down at the hands of President Obama Friday, Texas Congressman Jeb Hensarling this weekend invited a second round of punishment. "I stand by what I said," Hensarling said Saturday, referring to his manifestly ridiculous claim the previous day that "the old annual deficits under Republicans have now become the monthly deficits under Democrats." As it turns out, he wasn't talking about the red ink Republican George W. Bush. What he meant, Hensarling instead made clear, is the House GOP is now taking credit for the budget surpluses of the Clinton years, surpluses fueled in part by the 1993 deficit reduction package every single Republican in Congress voted against.

As sentient Americans will recall, the U.S. national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan only to double again George W. Bush. In between, President Clinton erased the GOP budget deficits, producing a $236 billion surplus by his last year in office and leaving Bush a 10 year forecasted surplus of $5.6 trillion. As President Obama made clear in setting Hensarling straight on Friday, he inherited a $1.2 trillion annual deficit when he was sworn in January 2009:

"Now, look, let's talk about the budget once again, because I'll go through it with you line by line. The fact of the matter is, is that when we came into office, the deficit was $1.3 trillion. -- $1.3 [trillion.] So when you say that suddenly I've got a monthly budget that is higher than the -- a monthly deficit that's higher than the annual deficit left by the Republicans, that's factually just not true, and you know it's not true."

While Obama is certainly right, Hensarling now insists was referring to something else. That something is Democratic blame for the Bush deficits and Republican ownership of the Clinton surpluses. As The Hill reported:

In anticipation of Obama rolling out his budget proposal Monday, Hensarling's Saturday statement cited Congressional Budget Office statistics putting the average deficit during 12 years of GOP House control at $104 billion and the average deficit under three years of Democratic control at $1.1 trillion.

The Republicans, as you'll remember, captured the House in 1994, maintaining control of the chamber until they were ejected in 2006. During that span, Bill Clinton presided over the end of the Reagan-Bush I deficits, only see to George W. Bush blow the surplus on tax cuts for the rich, the unfunded Medicare prescription drug program and the war in Iraq.

While Americans can look back fondly at the surpluses of the Clinton years, Jeb Hensarling wants them to forget that the Republican Party had very little to with it.

In 1993, Congress passed and President Clinton signed a half-billion deficit reduction package, one that included a boost in upper income tax rates to 39.6%. When Clinton's 1993 economic program scraped by without capturing the support of even one GOP lawmaker, the New York Times remarked:

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