By 2004, these cuts had reduced federal tax revenues, as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, to the lowest level since 1959. With the NASDAQ crash and one quarter of negative growth in 2000 it was likely we were headed into a recession, yet merely two years after the 2003 Bush tax cuts, federal revenues (in dollars) had reached a record high. The effect of simultaneous record increases in spending and tax reductions was to create record budget deficits in absolute terms, though as recently as 1993, the deficit was slightly larger than the current 3.6% of the GDP. In the last year of the Clinton administration, the federal budget showed an annual surplus of more than US$230 billion. Under Bush, the government returned to deficit spending. The annual deficit reached an absolute record of US$374 billion in 2003 and then a further record of $413 billion in 2004.