And the increase in forecast budget surpluses has anyway shifted the debate away from the old big-government-versus-small-government arguments of the 1980s.
This time, voters seem to be concerned about things like the future of Social Security and what to do with the forecast budget surplus.
To them, the forecast budget surpluses are proof of Mr Clinton's success in setting a new course which they want Mr Gore to continue.
In November's pre-budget report, the Treasury forecast much lower current-budget surpluses over the next four years than in the 2001 budget.
It's perfectly possible, on recent experience, that borrowing will turn out to be lower than that Budget forecast.
This means putting together a sales forecast and a budget, as well as two to five strategic objectives.
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And he forecast that the budget problems faced by some schools this year would affect future staffing levels.
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Mr Ryan's roadmap takes as its starting point the CBO's long-term budget forecast.
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The Chancellor uses the lower end of that forecast for his budget assumptions and has insisted recently that they will be met.
The improvement in the deficit would have been even bigger if current spending had grown in line with the budget forecast of 5.1%.
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But whether by fair means or foul, the chancellor now appears considerably closer to meeting his budget forecast than seemed likely late last year.
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Instead, I want to look at the new budget forecast and see what degree of fiscal discipline is necessary to get rid of red ink.
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In the ten months to January, they were 7.8% higher than in the same period in 2003-04 bang in line with the budget forecast for the whole financial year.
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So far the deficit is running more than 20% higher than last year and well above the Office for Budget Responsibility forecast.
They are keen to draw attention to the rapidly rising budget deficits forecast over the next few years, blaming Mr Bush's tax cuts for the rich.
Re-think how and what they forecast, measure and budget for.
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Now, the forecast that the Congressional Budget Office released last week was considerably more pessimistic about both 2010 and 2011 than either of the administration forecasts or the Blue Chip consensus.
In its long-term fiscal forecast, the Congressional Budget Office figures that in 25 years, the federal government will be spending about 10.5 percent of GDP on Medicare, Medicaid, and the new health insurance subsidies created by the Affordable Care Act.
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Which is why the weakness of the UK's disproportionately large consumer economy and the eurozone - Britain's largest export market, if regarded as a homogeneous whole - has meant growth in business investment has been significantly lower since the crash of 2008 than the government hoped (or, more precisely, than its Office for Budget Responsibility forecast).
Every year we try to do an honest, reasonable, conservative forecast to make sure that we are basing our budget assumptions on the best possible forecast that we can.
As you may know, the Council of Economic Advisers takes the lead in a process that includes the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Treasury to produce the administration forecast that goes into all of the budget projections.
Thanks to its ongoing stimulus spending, which it is not proposing to trim, Germany's underlying budget deficit is forecast to rise this year.
Even so, Eric Chaney, chief European economist at Morgan Stanley, says he is raising his budget-deficit forecast for 2006 from 3% to 3.5%.
The City had expected GDP to grow by 0.5%, in line with a forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) in late November.
The troika chiefs are concerned tax revenues will be lower than forecast, and that the budget still leaves space for spending overruns by the defence and health ministries and in local government.
And as I think we described at the time, we had -- we tried to do an honest, conservative forecast to make sure that we were basing our budget numbers on sort of as close to the consensus and reasonable forecast as we can.
At the budget, the chancellor forecast that revenue would rise in 2000-01 by 5.3%.
In the Budget, the Treasury forecast the economy would decline by between 3.25% to 3.75% in 2009 and missing this target would make it harder for the Treasury to balance its books.
It said it now expects the UK economy to grow by an average of 1.6% a year over the next three years - lower than the official forecast given by the Office for Budget Responsibility.
The FT somewhat cheekily points out that the Office for Budget Responsibility did see fit to incorporate the impact of the bank payouts on household incomes, in its revised economic forecast at the time of the Budget.
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