The surplus could have been a way for government to fix some of the fiscal problems suffered by Medicare and Social Security. Instead, it seems government is using the surplus as an excuse for not fixing the existing programs and simultaneously enacting a whole bunch of new ones. The danger, of course, is that the surpluses will vanish and the programs won t, leading again to deficits. The irony here is that the big government Bill wants creates more intrusion on the private sector and redirects resources from the economy and into government. That intrusion and redirection of resources threatens the very economy that gave us the surpluses in the first place.
Government never creates a healthy economy.
Government drains wealth from a healthy economy. Modest tax relief would be fine. Certainly the taxpayers should benefit from the current economic prosperity they have engineered. But more than anything, right now, Bill and Congress should be cutting spending, cutting programs and plowing every extra dime into debt reduction, Social Security and Medicare. A smaller, leaner government not saddled with decades worth of debt is the key to continued economic prosperity.