The Myth of the Clinton Surplus

The Myth of the Clinton Surplus
Verifying this is as simple as accessing the U.S. Treasury (see note about this link below) website where the national debt is updated daily and a history of the debt since January 1993 can be obtained. 
Considering the government's fiscal year ends on the last day of September each year, and considering Clinton's budget proposal in 1993 took effect in October 1993 and concluded September 1994 (FY1994), here's the national debt at the end of each year of Clinton Budgets:

Fiscal Year	Year Ending	National Debt	Deficit
FY1993	09/30/1993	$4.411488 trillion
FY1994	09/30/1994	$4.692749 trillion	$281.26 billion
FY1995	09/29/1995	$4.973982 trillion	$281.23 billion
FY1996	09/30/1996	$5.224810 trillion	$250.83 billion
FY1997	09/30/1997	$5.413146 trillion	$188.34 billion
FY1998	09/30/1998	$5.526193 trillion	$113.05 billion
FY1999	09/30/1999	$5.656270 trillion	$130.08 billion
FY2000	09/29/2000	$5.674178 trillion	$17.91 billion
FY2001	09/28/2001	$5.807463 trillion	$133.29 billion

As can clearly be seen, in no year did the national debt go down, nor did Clinton leave President Bush with a surplus that Bush subsequently turned into a deficit. 
Yes, the deficit was almost eliminated in FY2000 (ending in September 2000 with a deficit of "only" $17.9 billion), but it never reached zero--let alone a positive surplus number. 
And Clinton's last budget proposal for FY2001, which ended in September 2001, generated a $133.29 billion deficit. 
The growing deficits started in the year of the last Clinton budget, not in the first year of the Bush administration.