Word: cbo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Under no circumstances will I vote to spend one penny of the Social Security trust fund on anything but Social Security," declaimed DeLay at the launch. Yet just hours later, the Republican-led Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the GOP's current spending plan for next year would siphon at least $18 billion of the fund's surplus. And that, it said, was a conservative estimate. DeLay and the rest of the GOP leadership had little to say about the apparently glaring contradiction; the GOP rank and file sound worried. Under nocircumstances? "That's kind of an absolute statement...
...Fellas, it's out. "The Republicans have really put themselves in a box on this," says TIME congressional correspondent John Dickerson. "The CBO numbers are only a projection - the Republicans can still keep their promise. But to do it they'll have to continue to perform these ridiculous contortions that Clinton and the Democrats will have a field day with." Such as budgeting the 2000 census - on the calendar since 1789 - as an "emergency." Such as that plan to create a phantom "13th month" to hide more spending-cap spillover. Such as messing with the $2,000 earned income...
...this virtuous circle keep spinning? Yes, says Robert Reischauer, a Brookings Institution senior fellow, in line with the Congressional Budget Office he once headed. The CBO forecasts a small surplus of around $8 billion this fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, rising to perhaps $140 billion in fiscal 2008. Reischauer cautions, however, that the projections assume that the White House and Congress can clamp a tight lid on nonmilitary spending. In recent years, continued rises in civilian outlays have been offset by plummeting defense expenditures, but that drop has left little more...
What he meant was that balancing the budget doesn't require nearly so much pain when times are as good as they are now. How good? The budget deficit is expected to drop to $67 billion this year, 40% lower than the CBO had predicted. When negotiators found out that the shrinking deficit would give them an extra $225 billion to play with, the final knots in the deal dissolved. Christmas in May. Sometimes the mixture of money and politics is not so bad after...
This prudence is well founded. During the interminable budget brouhaha, Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail have often come across as soulless CPAS at an actuarial seminar, talking of CBO figures versus OMB numbers, more concerned with monetary matters than morality. "The budget battle," says conservative guru Bill Kristol, "played into the two great Republican vulnerabilities: that we are the party of the rich and the meanspirited." While Republicans donned their green eyeshades, the Great Empathizer in the White House cornered the compassion market. The President's constant refrain that "we should balance the budget...