Word: deficits
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Says Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution: "There are estimates suggesting that if we raise tax rates on people making more than $40,000, they will actually work harder. Unfortunately, they will probably also work harder to avoid taxes." Indeed, the most immediate threat to prosperity is the budget deficit, and many ideas for reducing it involve more austerity for the middle and lower classes -- for example, a value-added tax, a kind of national sales tax, to discourage consumption and promote savings, and further cuts in Government programs aimed at the working poor. And however attractive the idea...
Wait a minute, I can hear you saying. Don't these things cost money? The phrase budget deficit comes to mind. Is this as important as finding the unified theory of physics or housing the homeless? Yes and no. Yes, NASA could save money in the long run by having a clear goal, but why is money so scarce? Every year the U.S. Government invests some $300 billion in a Manichaean mythology that the world is divided by an eternal conflict between the forces of good and evil, light and dark. Why not invest instead in a different mythology...
...campaign issue, the nation's huge budget deficit, the questioners were unable to pin the candidates down on just how they can reduce it and still acquire the military weapons and social programs they support. Dukakis repeated his unpersuasive solution of tougher tax enforcement. He stressed welfare reforms that would put more poor people to work as a way to cut spending and simultaneously bring in more tax revenue. Bush argued that "we've got to get the Democrats' Congress under control" to hold down spending...
...within a thin dime" of an agreement on controversial welfare-reform legislation, according to its chief Senate sponsor, New York Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan. An increase in the minimum wage is also likely. After last December's so-called summit with the White House on reducing the federal deficit by $76 billion, both houses have passed all 13 appropriations bills, although differences in six remain to be reconciled...
George Bush and Michael Dukakis may be competing for the leadership of the free world, but virtually every movement, utterance and response they make is dictated by advisers like James Baker and John Sasso. -- This Congress is the most active since the Great Society. -- How to bring down the deficit -- a campaign essay. See NATION...