But Clinton paid down the debt!

But he paid down the debt President Clinton's “Lock Box” March 06, 2000

“ Once again, Bill Clinton is trying to outdo Congress in protecting Social Security. Two years ago, he challenged the Congress to save 60 percent of the surplus for Social Security. In this year’s budget, Clinton is proposing a "Social Security solvency lock-box" that is intended to secure every dollar of the Social Security surplus for Social Security. While this plan may conjure up images of stacks of cash waiting in Fort Knox for the Baby Boomers to retire, the reality is that his plan leaves the vault empty when the program begins to run large cash deficits in just 14 years. There is only one place to put the Social Security surplus - in the Personal Retirement Accounts of hard working Americans Clinton’s lock-box plan is nothing more than a scheme to use more than $3 trillion in Social Security surpluses to buy down federal debt. In exchange, the Social Security trust fund gets another $3 trillion worth of IOUs. To be sure, most Americans would rather pay down the debt than use Social Security’s surpluses to fund pork barrel projects. But make no mistake, once that money is spent – to buy down debt or fund new programs – it will not be there to cover Social Security’s long-term liabilities.  [Full] ” OMFG.  If only the nation had been warned. But wait. We were.  But by the vicious right-wing extremist machine, so it didn't count.