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That’s the problem when you have young reporters. They can’t remember back to the 1990s.

If NPR did have reporters who remembered back to the 1990s they would not be telling listeners that Ohio Governor John Kasich was “chairman of the House Budget Committee when he balanced the budget with President Clinton in the 1990s.”

Actually, neither John Kasich nor President Clinton balanced the budget in the 1990s. The 1996 Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections for the fiscal year 2000 budget showed a deficit in that year of $244 billion. Instead, the government ran a surplus of $232 billion. According to CBO the legislated changes put in place by Mr. Kasich and Mr. Clinton over this four year period added $10 billion to the deficit. 

This background information might have given listeners a somewhat different perspective on Mr. Kasich’s quote:

“At the end of the day, you look yourself in the mirror, and you say to yourself, ‘Did I do what was right for families and for children, and if I paid a political price, so what?”

CBO_projections_96-00_11873_image001
Source: Congressional Budget Office and author’s calculations.