Klobuchar targets the deficit in her newest television ad
2006-09-18
Source: Minnesota Star-Tribune
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rss feedIn her fifth and latest TV ad, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar touts her ideas for balancing the federal budget and starts the ad with this claim: "What's happened in Washington is that they've taken a $200 billion surplus and turned it into a $300 billion deficit." How accurate is that portrayal of the past five years of federal fiscal policy? Would you believe 72 percent accurate?
In 1998, 1999 and 2000, the federal government ran surpluses, bigger each year, reaching $236 billion in 2000. That's the "$200 billion surplus" referred to in the Klobuchar ad.
In 2005, the last year for which final numbers are available, the U.S. government ran a $318 billion deficit. That's the "$300 billion deficit" in the ad.
(The deficit this fiscal year is currently projected to decline to $296 billion.)
When Klobuchar says this is "what's happened in Washington," she doesn't specify whom she blames.
But the implication seems clear that the tax cuts and new spending programs enacted by the Republican-controlled Congress, supported by her opponent, U.S. Rep. Mark Kennedy, and signed by President Bush, are the cause of the change from surpluses to deficits.
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