Word: budgeteers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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People like me are supposed to disdain campaign ads as simplistic and demagogic. But these ads reflect a campaign's efforts to distill its themes into the purest form. And why not? It's where the lion's share of the budget is going. Watch these ads, and they'll tell you exactly what these campaigns most hope--and fear...
TRENT LOTT Labors months for budget deal, ends up with table scraps. But plenty o' pork for Mississippi...
...been spending money and every year leaving behind a prodigious pile of ious. As recently as 1992, the government spent a record $290 billion more than it took in, and the deficit would have been much larger without a big Social Security surplus. That was before the 1997 budget deal that began winding down the deficit, however. Now the payoff is here. In the fiscal year just ended, Uncle Sam rolled up a $123 billion surplus, by far the biggest in the nation's history. Even the non-Social Security part of the government about broke even. Suddenly, Capitol Hill...
...years will collect a mind-boggling $2.9 trillion more than it spends--$1.9 trillion in the Social Security trust fund, and $1 trillion as an excess of tax collections over spending for everything else the Feds do. The $1 trillion overage is the size of the entire federal budget in 1987 and, paradoxically, creates a problem for politicians that they have never faced before: How best to channel that torrent of cash...
Maybe better to say potential torrent. Past budget forecasts have been wildly off-target. As recently as 1996, the Clinton Administration predicted deficits of $200 billion or more each year as far as the eye could see. So, can today's great expectations be trusted? Absolutely, said a majority of members at a special session of TIME's Board of Economists, which met recently in Washington to debate the budgetary outlook. For this occasion the board included some of the country's most important public officials as well as economists. They split along party lines on what to do with...