Clinton should never have accomplished a budget surplus.
That surplus gave Republicans a defensive argument to cut taxes.
Perhaps Government shouldn never run a surplus, I don't truly know, but the small surplus that Clinton managed to obtain wasn't nearly enough to warrant the Republican's Bush tax cuts.
The Bush era tax cuts were so easily enacted due, in part, to The budget surplus Clinton managed to obtain.
Even though Republicans voice there opposition to debt and deficit, they were the party responsible for encurring trillions of dollars of debt under President Bush.
And even today they are criticizing the debt they incurred with their tax cuts and Defense spending, by directing the blame at Democrats and 'entitlement' spending.
I'm really tired of this attack. If Defense doesn't get blamed for its part in our problems then everything else is just a shell game to distract people from the truth.