It's overly simplistic to say that Clinton balanced the budget. While the 1993 bill raised taxes and reduced defense spending, there would not have been a surplus without further cuts driven by Republicans in 1997.

There was also the dot-com boom, which of course wouldn't have happened without Al Gore inventing the Internet.

The mental gymnastics one must do to believe in what they write is unbelievable. The answer lies right in front and you skipped over it with grace.

The pattern is extremely clear. During my lifetime, the deficit had increased under Republican presidents and decreased under Democrats. This has held steady for decades. That’s the more important thing than the question of exactly why one of them managed to get it to zero one time.

I agree that Republicans are probably worse on this topic, but as far as I can tell, the parties are closer to parity on this than they were in 1993. The Democratic party doesn't seem have people like Bill any more.

okay? and Obama? and Biden? why are you pointing back 30 years ago for this argument I wonder?

Obama inherited a housing crisis and two wars.

Biden had to deal the tail end of a pandemic and the financial fallout of that.

Not saying both couldn't have done much better on the budget but, if you compare them to Bush and Trump, they honestly do look quite competent.

Neither of those excuse having a budget in the negative.

Both reduced the deficit substantially during their time in office.

While literally true, this is not very insightful/useful information because Obama entered office at peak deficit spend to counter the mortgage crisis, and Biden entered at peak deficit spend to counter COVID lockdowns. Because both the mortgage crisis and COVID eventually ended, deficit spend came down from those peaks without either president meaningfully reforming the budget.

Structurally, the budget has gotten worse every year since the 1990s. In large part for reasons not attributable to presidents. For example the number of old people (as a % of the population) in the US has doubled since the '90s, thus ballooning medicare and social security spend. Without cutting eligibility to those programs, increased spend was always going to be an inevitability due to seismic underlying demographic trends. Second, the persistent deficit has led to now $2T in annual interest expense. Again, not something an administration can simply "reform" or back out of; that is now structural inherited spend.

Can you at least concede that Republican presidents have been worse for the debt than democrat presidents?

Not so fast. Clinton's 1993 deficit reduction plan was a 10 year plan. It did cut, a little, but the real cuts were in years 9 and 10 - years when Clinton would be out of office, even with two terms. It was a "kick the can down the road" plan, that left the next president dealing with the real cuts.

Then Republicans took Congress in 1994 with their "Contract With America". They passed a budget that was much closer to balanced, whether Clinton wanted it or not. Eventually, as you say, that led to a surplus in 2000. (That was the first surplus since Andrew Jackson, by the way.) But Clinton by himself wasn't going to do it. He was going to play pretend. It was the Republican Congress that forced him to.

Now, if you think I'm advocating for the Republicans here, I note that Republicans don't believe in anything like a balanced budget when the president is their guy. I'm just saying that, if you're going to point to Clinton, state the record accurately.

(One detail I don't remember: Why did Clinton's 1993 deficit plan get no Republican votes? Was it because they did not want to cut the deficit? Was it because they just wanted to deny Clinton a victory? Or was it because they wanted to actually do something about the deficit, and Clinton's plan was more pretend than real?)