Word: gdp
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Economists prefer to think of federal deficits in terms of their percentage of the gross domestic product. But here too, the news is not good. Back in the days of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, deficits generally hovered at a relatively harmless 1% or 2% of gdp, except for a brief uptick to 3% at the end of the Johnson Administration to help pay for the Vietnam War. In contrast, during the Reagan-Bush years, the deficit's share of gdp shot up to between 3% and 7%, meaning that government red ink was weighing far more heavily...
These are programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps and farm-price supports, many of which aid primarily the middle class and those with higher incomes. This year alone, entitlements are expected to cost more than $700 billion, about half the annual federal budget and 14% of the GDP. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that $51.5 billion could be saved over five years by merely eliminating Social Security cost-of-living increases for one year. Similarly, Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that $26.8 billion could be saved over five years by taxing 50% of Medicare benefits...
...have boasted growth rates of 5% and sometimes higher; by contrast, the current 2% rate is paltry, and unlikely to improve soon. Michael Boskin, chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisers, last week said he expected the economy might inch toward a 3% growth in GDP by year's end, but he also said he could not rule out the possibility that growth would again flatten out. Asked to pronounce the recession over, Boskin demurred: "We've returned to a pattern of growth...
...real GDP...
...crisis could go any number of ways, including petering out. Quebeckers may not want to risk a leap into the dark of independence during a recession. (Even a Quebecois economist admits that sovereignty would involve transitional costs of as much as 10% of Quebec's GDP -- a prospect that separatist politicians carefully soft-pedal.) It is possible, finally, that some deal will be struck either by Mulroney or even by western politicians willing to give Quebec its head in return for a redesigned federal government...