Dick:

I was wrong about late 2000. The first sag was in Clinton's last quartter. Sorry.

So the chart about which we are speaking says that Clinton's net score was an increase of 526 billion at peak, which slipped to a positive gain of 398 billion when he left office.

ush's net score for his first term was a loss of 541 billion from that 398+. He managed to offset the negative to - 394B at the end of the chart.

No matter ow you parse the fine points, though, the graph is starkly catastrophic from the day he moved in.

The graph you now refer me to, from the NY Times, makes it clear that Conton's era was the only one in which revenues exceeded spending, and that immediately after Clinton the revnue stream fell to a forty-year low while spending increased dramatically.

If you ran your own budget that way, pal, you'd be bankrupt.


A