When talking about the federal budget, a Democratic Party talking point is that George W. Bush converted a $5 trillion surplus to $5 trillion dollars of debt. The Bush years were a disaster, and there was lots of deficit spending. But there was no $5 trillion dollar surplus.
The $5 trillion dollar surplus was a 10-year projection Bill Clinton made when he left office. It was a projection. There was no pile of money sitting in the US Treasury.
Even if Bill Clinton had been President from 2001-2009, the federal government would not have had a $5 trillion budget surplus. There were two recessions, a housing bubble, bank bailouts, a derivatives fiasco, and massive offshoring of jobs. There's no way the federal budget would have remained at a surplus, especially when you take into account both parties' refusal to even consider reducing military spending.
To summarize, Bush stunk, but he didn't squander a $5 trillion surplus.
