LTE: Federal Budget Deficits

In recent LTEs and comments, the POTUS has been given
credit for the performance of the economy during his
term in office. Democrats like to point to the fiscal
responsibility of Bill Clinton and the surplus that he
left when he left office. Americans who are ignorant
of the Constitution have accepted this half-lie hook,
line and sinker.
Using Clinton as an example, the Federal government
ran a deficit of $420B in the first two years (Democrat
Congress). The deficit in the next three years was $300B
(Republican Congress). The surplus in the next three
years was $410B and the first Bush year was $175B
(Republican Congress). The net deficit for Clinton's
eight years was $310B.
The most important factor appears to be Congress. This
is logical since Congress has the Constitutional budget
responsibility under Article I, Section 8. This is not
really the case now that stimulus bills have been passed
which have given the Executive over $800B to spend without
additional approval. According to Recovery.gov, 436,348
jobs have been created using the initial stimulus bill.
The jobs have cost between $72,230 (VA) and $205,350 (IL)
each. Going into elections, $285B of the initial stimulus
has not been spent and is available for timely "targeted
needs." Congress refuses to return the excess to the
Treasury even though the United States has had 4 quarters
of GDP growth which ended the recession and the "crisis."
Americans are naive if they believe these $billion$ will be
spent in a non-partisan way.
Unemployment is still high because of the uncertainty
among employers about health care expenses for employees and
new taxes, and because much stimulus money went as grants to
irresponsible governments to pay for bad policies and to
unions.