AP Photo

As Washington’s fiscal profligacy is debated, few have pointed to a tremendous budgetary turnaround achieved in the mid-1990s. Over just a few years, between 1995 and 1998, Canada transformed a $32 billion federal deficit, equivalent to 4 percent of its gross domestic product, into a $2.5 billion surplus. This achievement was followed by a full decade of surplus budgets, with debt, tax and poverty rates all falling as growth, investment and employment rose.