[strandinthewind]

^^

No, a surplus is a good thing. Put it this way, instead of lying to invade a country that had nothing to do with 9/11 and then spending the trillions in surplus and then borrowing trillions of additional dollars to fix the boo boo -- W could have:

1. Maintained the war in Afganistan, they attacked us after all;

2. Built at least 10 VA Hospitals to replace the crumbling ones we have now;

3. Built a mega infrastructure for wind enegry, which mostly is harnessed in remote areas, to be used throughout the power grids of this country.

Every American would have benefited this way and hundreds of thousands if not millions of jobs would have been created in this scenario -- and there would have been a few billion left over for a rainy day, like to address the recession that closely followed Clinton's exit from office and likely began while he was in office due, in part, to the .com and Enron esq. meltdowns. That is why a surplus is a good thing; saving always is. Also, it is impossible for the best of us to plan to break even and really nor should the govt.

So, when there is excess money on this scale, it should go back to the people via the three example I gave. That way, the "additional" money is spent on something for the good of the pople that the govt. would have to pay for anyway, but did not think could be in the budget in the first place.