http://www.business.auburn.edu/~whittdo/THE%20ELIMINATION%20OF%20THE%20NATIONAL%20DEBT%20IN%201835.htm
On January 1, 1835, the United States paid off entirely its longstanding public debt. For that year and the next the nation enjoyed debt-freedom, the only two years in its entire history when it held no obligation to creditors. For this reason the years 1835-1836 are unique and significant, but, oddly enough, historians of Jacksonian America have overlooked what this financial circumstance and its anticipation meant to the era. This historiographical oversight is particularly striking because the Jacksonians themselves and their opponents made much of the extraordinary financial situation which materialized during Andrew Jackson’s second term. National debt-freedom was, in fact, a core element of what is commonly called Jacksonian Democracy.
The elimination of the national debt caught nobody by surprise on New Year’s Day, 1835. It had been anticipated for a decade. In December, 1824, in his last annual message to Congress, retiring President James Monroe had announced that, barring any unforeseen emergency, the public debt would be extinguished on that date. Congress had, in fact, been working toward debt elimination ever since the Treaty of Ghent and, after 1824, aggressively adhered to Monroe’s timetable, refinancing debt whenever it could and making sure that the Sinking Fund Commission had the resources to meet interest and principal payments on time. The second Bank of the United States made the actual disbursements to creditors. Consensus, it seemed, existed regarding the need to eliminate the debt. However, when President John Quincy Adams presented Congress in December, 1825, an agenda for road and canal construction, a national university, an astronomical institute, and other federal initiatives—an agenda without cost estimates, timelines, and other fiscal data—he raised the suspicion that he was not committed to debt elimination according to Monroe’s schedule, and this suspicion helped cripple his administration.
I Was Born, no. You are confused about earmarks. Earmarks don’t add anything to a bill. They just appropriate where the money goes. Ron Paul put those in there to give to his Constituents, rather than letting the federal government do with their tax dollars what they wished. Earmarks are added after the amount of money is decided upon.
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