Word: chairman
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...sure, there are few times in our congressmen?s lives that they look as stupefied as when Alan Greenspan comes to visit them on Capitol Hill. But as tax-cut-hungry Republicans in the House and Senate blinked their way through the Fed chairman?s testimony on the last two Wednesdays ?- testimony in which Greenspan repeatedly shot down the idea of massive tax cuts -- one sensed that another question besides "huh?" was nagging at them this time. Namely, wasn?t this guy supposed to be a Republican...
...would have known it too. The tax cut is too damn big. It?s supposed to differentiate the Republicans from the Clintoncrats, and it certainly does. The problem is that all those years of rightward, ho! has left Clinton as the fiscal conservative (with a Reagan-appointed Fed chairman on his side) and Republicans as the fiscal profligates. The boomers already got their money in 1981; now that they?ve got leftovers, they want to squirrel some of it away for when they get old. For when their kids get old. To pay down the debt they ran up then...
...promise -- a hunch, even -- by a bunch of Washington politicians. And it could disappear just as quickly. "Things are happening which we call technical factors, which is another way of saying we don't have a clue, and they could just as readily go in the other direction," the chairman said. "And, if you start to simulate a number of these things that could go wrong, those surpluses evaporate fairly rapidly...
...tidbits: Even a big tax cut, properly phased in, wouldn?t spark inflation. And it certainly would be preferable to frittering it away on new spending programs. But give Big Al his druthers, and he?d rather pay down the debt. It isn?t surprising that the Fed Chairman, whose speeches are the economic equivalent of Rorshach tests, left both sides with enough soundbites to claim his support. On his list of preferences, the tax cut ranks second. The Clinton plan certainly bears some characteristics of a spender?s plan ?- that?s certainly what the Republicans say. But the voters...
...late Tuesday to trash the bill for neglecting Medicare) to the polls, the appetite for a cut that big just isn?t there right now. Even fellow Republican and economic icon Alan Greenspan is in on the finger-wagging. In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee Tuesday, the Fed chairman more or less repeated what he told the House last week: In this time of economic plenty, tax cuts aren?t bad, but debt repayment ?- and preparing for boomers? retirements ? is a whole lot better. And while the Senate leadership shouldn?t have much trouble ramming their bill through...