Comment by jameslk
16 hours ago
Congress is the one that largely makes the fiscal policy choices. For example, during Clinton’s second term when the deficit was almost eliminated (some claim there was a surplus, but there wasn’t because of social security liabilities), you had a republican controlled congress who were pushing for cuts and fiscal tightening:
The republican program was in large part vetoed by Clinton though and the spending cuts that passed were largely offset by the tax cuts. From what I read the reduction in deficit is mostly due to the dot-com boom, helped with the "deficit reduction act" of 1993 that was pushed by Clinton and happened to hike taxes at the right time to tax the boom.