When will the clock stop?

When do you think the national debt clock will stop and go backwards?

I know it depends on a lot of factors including who is president, but what's your gut feeling?

I chose not in our lifetime. Our nation may well collapse before we get it turned around.

Never.

I think the last time the US ran a surplus was in the Teddy Roosevelt days. Imagine, that was before the Feds used income tax to soak the rich. The Feds made their money off customs duties on imports.

Not in my lifetime... Not enough compromise between everyone involved.

To me the only hope is for worldwide default. Then all the nations of the world can agree to zero the ledger and start over. And then maybe we can all get back to a more localized economy.

SS109 wrote: Never.

I think the last time the US ran a surplus was in the Teddy Roosevelt days. Imagine, that was before the Feds used income tax to soak the rich. The Feds made their money off customs duties on imports.

236 Billion dollar surplus in 2000.

"The day the Bush administration took over from President Bill Clinton in 2001, America enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus -- with a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion," Axelrod wrote.

We wondered whether Axelrod's numbers were correct.

When we asked for his sources, the White House pointed us to several documents. The first was a 2002 report from the Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, that reported the 2000 federal budget ended with a $236 billion surplus. So Axelrod was right on that point."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... g-deficit/

Now I'm just talking about stopping the clock and reversing the debt...not eliminating it (that imo is never going to happen). I think a good campaign promise would be to say "I will stop the clock!" Would anyone have the huevos to make that statement and hold to it?

Soulshiner wrote:

SS109 wrote: Never.

I think the last time the US ran a surplus was in the Teddy Roosevelt days. Imagine, that was before the Feds used income tax to soak the rich. The Feds made their money off customs duties on imports.

236 Billion dollar surplus in 2000.

"The day the Bush administration took over from President Bill Clinton in 2001, America enjoyed a $236 billion budget surplus -- with a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion," Axelrod wrote.

We wondered whether Axelrod's numbers were correct.

When we asked for his sources, the White House pointed us to several documents. The first was a 2002 report from the Congressional Budget Office, an independent agency, that reported the 2000 federal budget ended with a $236 billion surplus. So Axelrod was right on that point."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter ... g-deficit/

That was the budget and not the national debt (which should also include unfunded liabilities)

CriticalBill wrote: That was the budget and not the national debt (which should also include unfunded liabilities)

When you have a budget surplus, you are not adding to the deficit, and that surplus can be used to start paying down the debt....Bush choose, however, to use it for tax cuts, which does nothing for lowering the national debt, then with a couple wars to pay for, there was no surplus to tap, and even though he kept the wars out of the budget, that money was still flying out the door. If he had put the wars into the budget, like Obama has done, his numbers would be far worse than reported.