Mustang Rants

I saw this article on Yahoo news, and also found it buried in the Strib. Basically, the federal deficit is at it's lowest level in 4 years, and besides that, the Fed is still concerned about inflation, another sign of a booming economy. Unemployment is under 5%, which is, according to my Econ texts, full employment. 10 years ago, this news would have been plastered on the front page; today it is invisible. The article does mention that there were 4 years of "surpluses" ending in 2002, but I have a question about that. You'll forgive me, I'm a business management major, not an accountant or economist. When I look up the public debt, I notice that even when we had a supposed surplus, the public debt rose every year. In fact, the public debt rose from $4.06 Trillion to $5.67 Trillion during the Clinton administration. An additional 1.6 Trillion in debt!? But we had a surplus! We must have, Amy Klobuchar keeps saying so!