Pop Quiz about Gingrich Qustion 1.

OK, Pop quiz time...

Question #1:
True or False: Newt Gingrich balanced the budget as Speaker of the House by cutting spending.

The answer is False

Newt deserves credit for balancing the budget as House Speaker, however, he did little more than curtail spending.  But when he was Speaker of the House, spending increased every year.  The surplus came from a roaring economy that produced record revenue for the Federal government.  If you take a trip back to the mid to late 1990s, you may remember that spending on Information Technology was at an all-time high.  This was spurred by two events.  First was the fact that the Internet was widely available for the first time and many businesses were spending money like crazy to take advantage.  Second, there were many new companies that drew a slew of investors and those investments were paying handsomely.  Income tax revenues were high, business tax revenues were high and capital gains tax revenues were high.  In fact, if we had the same level of revenue today that we had in FY 1999, we would have a balanced budget, assuming that many of the porkulus programs would be no longer needed.  But, as you recall, that would all come crashing down by the time that George W. Bush came to office.

Newt was House Speaker, spending increased from 1.6 Trillion in FY 1996 to 1.8 Trillion in FY 2000, the last year that House Speaker Newt was in charge of the House.  Federal Spending increased.  Spending on some programs was reduced, but Federal Spending increased anyway.  Those are very modest increases by today's standards, but there were still increases in spending none the less. 

But what Newt does deserve credit for is curbing spending.  Once the Federal Budget went into surplus, members of Congress on both sides of the isle wanted to spend like never before.  The minute we had a surplus, it could have been gone.  Gingrich and Clinton worked together to curb a potential spending spree.  Newt ensured that a tax cut was passed.

This is the type of approach to balancing the budget that will not work in 2012.  We simply don't have the gift of a game-changing technology this time.  We can't afford to balance the budget by increasing spending.  We have to balance the budget by cutting spending this time.

Source
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Stay tuned for Question #2.