1115.org

Modern leadership apparently means blaming your predecessor:

President Bill Clinton left office in 2001 with a federal budget surplus of $127 billion. President George Bush ran a deficit of $319 billion in 2005. So who deserves more credit for fighting red ink?

No question, says Treasury Secretary John Snow: It’s his boss, Bush. Sipping a latte at a Starbucks coffee shop with reporters in Washington two days ago, he said that “the president’s legacy will be one of having significantly reduced the deficit in his time,” and said Clinton’s budget was a “mirage” and “wasn’t a real surplus.”

There’s really nothing much to say about such blatant up-is-downism, except I’d like for everyone doing better now than in the 90s to let me know. But the overlooked money shot in the Snow interview is this bit:

Government forecasts for continued surpluses depended on those tax payments continuing, Snow, 66, said. “You’re going to make a lot of mistakes if you forecast based on a bubble,” he said. “Bubbles burst.”

In ‘99-’00, as Bush was campaigning for President, he repeated one line at each and every stop he made: “My tax cuts will give the people their money back.” Interviewed on CNN in January 2000, Bush said:

“Well, the rest of the surplus, I meet baselines of a budget. For example, the Medicare spending under my plan increases to about $300 billion a year. I meet basic needs in my budget, and there’s still money left over, about $580 billion in a five year period of time. I want $480 billion of it to go to the tax payers.”

That line was based on the same “bubble forecast” Snow decries now, but the irony, of course, is that even as the bubble began leaking and surpluses turned to record deficits, Bush and his merry band of insane economic advisors insisted on the same tax cuts.

Maybe Secretary Snow can explain this next time.