Screaming at the Funny Money Dummy

I'm no genius when it comes to finances.  However, a couple of weeks back I was listening to Bill Clinton hawking his book on Al Franken's Show on Air America and he let this little wonky factoid slip that I just can't get out of my head.
 
Bill said that the Bush administration had to borrow money from China to cover the tax refunds.  Now I can't find out exactly which year he was talking about - 2001, 2003 or both?  But man, this is seriously f'd up.
 
So I looked high and low and this was the best article I could find (read: most dumbed down for me).  I found out that the reason it was so hard to find is because they are making a concerted effort to keep this info in the back pages of the papers.  So check it out here from WaPo.