Congress controls the purse. Bill Clinton was dealing with a GOP-controlled Congress -- the first in decades -- that pushed him into signing a balanced budget. He strenuously resisted and threatened a government shutdown over it, but eventually caved. Then he -- and all the Dems who had protested against fiscal discipline -- saw it as politically advantageous to claim credit for a shrinking deficit. I've read, however, that the Clinton administration also manipulated the numbers to exaggerate the debt-reduction effect. In short, Bill Clinton was not a deficit hawk trying to save us from profligate Republicans. It's true that both parties are most concerned about the deficit when they have the least power or responsibility to do anything about it. But the starting position of Democrats as long as I can remember is that there's an endless supply of public money to provide everyone with free this and free that, and the only conceivable reason to object is callous cruelty. It's been mostly Republicans who have pointed out the solvency issues in Social Security and Medicare - and every effort to bring up the subject and discuss restructuring entitlement programs has brought howls of outrage from Democrats. Then Donald Trump's boosters crowed that he was much more compassionate than the other Republicans because he promised not to touch entitlements -- i.e. he would do nothing about the sustainability problem. Another thing: It was Republicans, starting with George W. Bush, who worried about the solvency issues at Fannie Mae -- and it was Democrats who blocked GOP efforts to fix the problem. You can see Barney Frank and other Democrats ridiculing the fiduciary experts and insisting there was no problem at all. One of the first things Obama did as a senator was join a filibuster to block a GOP effort to address the fiscal problems in fed-backed mortgage programs. Then the catastrophe happened, and of course Dems (and the MSM) blamed George Bush, who had repeatedly urged Congress to fix the problem, which was their responsibility.