 But in the last 50 years, the American government has run a budget deficit in 45 of those 50 years and a surplus in only five of those years, mostly during Clinton's late second term when you had a big tech boom and the revenues really took off and there was some spending restraint which was done there. But otherwise, government spending has gone up in the last 100 years from 3% of GDP to 36% today. The government's debt has similarly exploded. The deficit today is at a