Fact Check: Viral Pic of Bill Clinton Forecasting 'Debt-Free America' by 2013 Didn't Age Well
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Claim:
In early 2024, viral social media posts shared an authentic photograph of former U.S. President Bill Clinton standing before a chart titled "America: Debt Free by 2013."
Rating:
In March 2024, an image of former U.S. President Bill Clinton was shared several times on Reddit and X (formerly Twitter) to viral effect. It shows him standing in front of a chart that forecasts a reduction of U.S. debt titled "America: Debt Free by 2013." On Reddit, the photo, posted without context, gained 36,100 upvotes:
(Reddit Screenshot)
On X, an account using the handle @PoorlyAgedStuff shared the same image on March 11. That post had garnered 216,000 views, 6,700 likes and had been reshared 385 times as of this writing.
Authentic Photo
Two reverse-image searches on TinEye and Google Images revealed that this is an authentic picture of Clinton taken on Feb. 7, 2000, as he presented his administration's full-year 2001 budget, which would be his last.
With the November 2000 presidential election looming, Clinton had less than a year left in office. Then-Vice President Al Gore would become the presidential nominee for the Democratic party, representing continuity after eight years of economic growth and budgetary surpluses from 1998 to 2001, the only years this happened between 1969 and 2023.
In 1993, when Clinton arrived at the White House, the public debt-to-gross domestic product ratio was 63.4%. By his last year in office in 2000, it had shrunk to 54.9%, according to the Federal Reserve in St. Louis.
So in 2000, with a growing economy, high employment and a well-balanced budget, it may have seemed possible to wipe out the country's public debt within 15 years. This is exactly what this budget aimed to do. The administration titled it "Maintaining Fiscal Discipline While Making Key Investments." We found the full text in the archives of the Clinton White House. The summary of the plan to eliminate the debt reads as follows:
A BALANCED AND FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE BUDGET
The Clinton-Gore Administration's FY2001 budget provides a balanced and fiscally responsible framework to eliminate the debt by 2013, strengthen the solvency of Social Security and Medicare, and invest in key priorities like health and education. Under the President's budget:
Clinton presented his plan and, ever the "Explainer-in-Chief" (as the press would later nickname him), used a blue marker to draw a curve showing how the trillions of dollars of public debt would disappear should the succeeding administration stick to the plan. Here are two photographs of Clinton drawing on the chart. We found this one on the website of the Clinton White House archives:
Clinton draws a chart of public debt as he presents his 2001 full-year budget on Feb. 7, 2000. (Angeline Gazdag/The Clinton White House archives)
This second image, which was taken by the same photographer who took the viral picture, can be found in the Getty Images bank:
( Getty Images)
How the Plan Failed
This, of course, happened before the 2000 election was decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, resulting in Gore's loss. It also happened before the 9/11 attacks, before the U.S. went to war in Iraq and Afghanistan, before President George W. Bush expanded Medicare to cover drugs, and before the 2008 financial crisis that resulted in unprecedented government bailouts of lending institutions.
Debt has since ballooned at the rate of $1 trillion to $2 trillion per year, reaching $33.17 trillion in 2023, from $5.53 trillion in 1997. In 2013, when Clinton hoped to eliminate the U.S.' public debt, the debt-to-GDP ratio surpassed 100%. It stood at 123% in 2023, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Sources:
'President Clinton Draws a Downward Line on a Chart, Unveiling His...' Getty Images, 6 Nov. 2002, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/president-clinton-draws-a-downward-line-on-a-chart-news-photo/1590999.
'After Drawing a Downward Line on a Chart, President Clinton Unveils...' Getty Images, 6 Nov. 2002, https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/after-drawing-a-downward-line-on-a-chart-president-clinton-news-photo/1591011.
The Clinton-Gore Administration FY2001 Budget: Photo - President Clinton Preents Budget Plan. https://clintonwhitehouse3.archives.gov/WH/New/00Budget/photo01.html. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024.
The Clinton-Gore Administration FY2001 Budget: Maintaining Fiscal Discipline While Making Key Investments. https://clintonwhitehouse3.archives.gov/WH/New/00Budget/. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024.
U.S. Office of Management and Budget. 'Federal Surplus or Deficit [-]'. FRED, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, 30 June 1901, https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFSD.
THE BUSH RECORD - FACT SHEET: Empowering Medicare Beneficiaries With Affordable Options. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/bushrecord/factsheets/medicare.html. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024.
Historical Debt Outstanding | U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/historical-debt-outstanding/. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024
General government gross debt Percent of GDP | International Monetary Fun. https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GGXWDG_NGDP@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD/USA. Accessed 14 Mar. 2024.
