>>I do not know that that happened. I just see 2 categories of debt and both have to be paid down. Even though the publicly held debt [e.g., savings bonds, t-bills, etc] may have gone down, but the intergov debt went up at a big enough rate to where the overall federal debt continued to increase every year. Sounds dubious to me to claim the "debt" went down when what you really mean is the National public debt went down but we'll not tell them the overall National debt went up.
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>I did not write that the federal debt went down. What I wrote was that Clinton made a payment on the debt, in at least3 successive years. I think you are ignoring the most plausible explanation for the debt still increasing despite the payments: there was/is interest accruing on that debt. That is the most likely explanation, not some accounting trickery or media conspiracy.

That's all well and good but the federal debt did not go down. I'll agree that that the National debt did not grow as much as was expected because there was enough of a budget surplus during those years that a part of the accrued interest was paid for. I will never concede that the overall National Debt was reduced in ANY fiscal year be it under Clinton, Bush I/II, Reagan, Carter, etc. My definition of reduced here is that the overall National debt at the end of any fiscal [budget] year must be less that it was at the end of the previous fiscal year.