The republican lie taking credit for Clinton’s surpluses

ThinkProgress has explored Newt Gingrich’s claim that he was involved in 4 balanced budgets.

“If you look at my record, the only Speaker in your lifetime to get to four balanced budgets,”
Newt Gingrich

ThinkProgress writes:

However, this talking point is much more fiction than fact. For starters, as USA Today noted, “Gingrich was in office for only two of those budget years (fiscal 1998 and 1999). But he continues to claim credit for two balanced budgets that were passed after he left office (fiscal 2000 and 2001).” Furthermore, as Citizens for Tax Justice’s Bob McIntyre wrote, it was actually the 1993 budget, which all Republicans opposed, that laid the groundwork for the balanced budgets that occurred under President Bill Clinton:

Further:

“Center for American Progress Director for Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden has actually found that legislation passed by Gingrich’s House Republicans made the budget picture worse in the 90s, not better. “Gingrich and his Republican Congress had nothing at all to do with balancing the budget in 1998. In fact, the net effect of their efforts was to make the fiscal situation slightly worse,” Linden noted. “