Federal surplus hits $1.69B in July

That should make the Libs happy now we have some more tax dollars to squander on social programs...

Sometimes it's a good idea to leave well-enough alone and ride along in the black for a while. Just a recommendation.

Of course we're assuming that Finance Monkey Flaherty didn't hide a $5 billion debt someplace.

He's certainly got some funny ideas about accounting. A couple years ago, as federal finance minister, he tried to claim Canada would be debt free in 10 years or so. Anyone remember that one?

yeah, I remember that. Every economist and accountant in the country said he cookin the books.

He tried to use the gimmick of just using net debt and not gross to measure the total debt and not the deficit. A shell game all the same.

I'm curious to see Kenmore's take on this. Since he claimed that the Conservatives had put us into a deficit budget again.

Well, after the first two months of deficit, now we're even right?

Frankly I don't care how they do it, but we better stay in a surplus situation. To go from $14 billion to minus anything would be inexcuseable.

Well, raising spending by 14% (that we know about) while cutting taxes is the sure way to deficit, bootlegga.

That's the real Conservative record.

Actually the Conservative record is continued surplus's.

Actually the Conservative record is continued surplus's.

The surpluses (no apostrophe needed for pluralization) recorded have been MUCH smaller than those posted by the Liberals, and Flaherty's creativity in accounting is well known. And as has been stated, we flirted with deficit spending earlier this year. The Conservative record is of having taken us to the brink, but not quite over.

When the Conservatives post a budget deficit for an entire fiscal year I'll be right there with you guys.

The problem is that he is including the 5 billion dollar sale of bandwith, a one time credit that won't be around next year. To me one time sales like that are problamatic to add into the equation because it really means that next year we already have 5 billion less to work with. Sales like that should go only to debt reduction and never into programs that will require a yearly cost.

Great, so we'll have the election, thr conservatives might win a majority, and come budget time in February, we'll be in deficit spending and they'll be laughing at us schmucks cause they got four more years to screw us over. Just great.