Yes, that is crap, during the Clinton/GOP congress years [congress is, ya know, a little bit involved in making budgets] we ran a 1.9 billion surplus in '99 and 86.4 billion in 2000... we also ran a deficit ever other year, most of those years the deficit exceeded the combined surplus of the last one each... I don't believe 2/8ths is 'almost all'

First, the most important fiscal aspect of the eight years during which Bill Clinton was president will be that it was the time the federal budget went from being perpetually in deficit to constantly in surplus. (For purposes of this series of columns, the Clinton era is defined as fiscal years 1994-2001 and is obviously based on a number of assumptions about the final results for fiscal 2000-2001.) While a surplus has now come to be expected, the fact that it happened not once but for five consecutive years (fiscal years 1998-2002) and is projected to keep on happening after Clinton leaves office makes it exceptionally noteworthy

President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion (Skeeve: not 89 billion as you claim), making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion."This represents the largest one-year debt reduction in the history of the United States," Clinton said Wednesday morning. "Like our American athletes in Sydney, we've been breaking records and have come a long way."In June, the administration predicted the surplus would be $211 billion, and would increase by as much as $1 trillion over the next 10 years.Clinton also announced the federal government paid down the national debt by $223 billion this year, and by more than $360 billion since 1998

Yes it is <a href="http://www.cnsnews.com/node/68094">from 2007 data</a> but the tax rates are the same, yes? Middle-class households that earned between $34,300 and $141,900 paid 50.5 percent of all federal tax revenues in 2007 (the most recent year analyzed), according to the CBO study released Thursday, and households that earned between $34,300 and $352,900 paid 66.7 percent of all federal taxes.