26 June 2010
CAJ note: we found politifact.com via our local newspaper. It’s been a very useful tool so far.
“When George Bush took office, President Clinton, a Democrat, and the Democratic Congress at the time had left an annual budget that was in surplus.”
Sheldon Whitehouse on Thursday, June 24th, 2010 in a Senate floor speech
The Truth-O-Meter Says… 
With polls showing Americans becoming increasingly concerned about the debt, Democrats have been trying to blame President George W. Bush and Republicans for fiscal decisions of the past decade. But in some cases, the Democrats have gotten their facts wrong.
In a speech on the Senate floor on June 24, 2010, Democratic U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island criticized the Bush Administration for squandering a federal surplus.
“When George Bush took office, President Clinton, a Democrat, and the Democratic Congress at the time had left an annual budget that was in surplus,” Whitehouse said. “It was returning more money to the federal government than we were spending. It was an annual budget in surplus. We had a national debt at the time, but with the annual budget in surplus, our Congressional Budget Office — the nonpartisan, not Republican, not Democratic, professional Congressional Budget Office — had estimated that, when George Bush took office, we would be a debt-free nation by 2009. We would be a debt-free nation by 2009. That was the trajectory that Democratic President Bill Clinton and the Democratic Congress left, along with those annual budget surpluses, when George Bush and the Republicans took office.”
We won’t delve into the varying degrees of blame that Clinton and Bush deserve for the current deficit and debt in this item. But when Whitehouse says that “Clinton, a Democrat, and the Democratic Congress at the time had left an annual budget that was in surplus,” he’s wrong.
When Clinton handed over the reins to Bush, there was a Republican Congress, not a Democratic one. In fact, it wasn’t even a close call: For the last six years of Clinton’s term, the GOP had been in control of both the House and the Senate.
The article continues at Politifact.com
