Table 1 below shows Federal Tax Revenues, Federal Expenditures and the Budget Surplus or Deficit from 1993 (the first year of the Clinton Presidency) to 2011.

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They were ideas like privatizing Social Security, like moving back from a balanced budget and a surplus to deficit and debt.

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One reason why this system cannot go on much longer is that Asia's crisis of 1997-98 put the budget deeply into deficit and, unaided, it may not return to surplus.

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In early October the Treasury released a pre-election economic and fiscal update indicating that after 14 years in surplus the budget balance was set to slip into deficit.

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Between 1992 and 2000, for example, the Clinton administration turned a worrying budget deficit into a handsome surplus.

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