Word: gramm-rudman
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...robust 3.3% in 1989, vs. the 2.7% growth rate predicted by a consensus of top private forecasters. The Administration's scenario for a fast-moving economy would raise more than $80 billion in fresh tax revenues and help Bush meet the $100 billion deficit ceiling mandated by the Gramm-Rudman law for fiscal...
...Bush may be handing over the economic throttle to Greenspan by failing to take any tough deficit-reduction measures that might remove the heat from prices and interest rates. The Administration has little real chance to hit the Gramm-Rudman target without a tax increase, which Bush has ruled out, or politically unpopular spending cuts, which the President seems loath to initiate. Bush's strategy of leaving the hard choices to Congress has led so far to budget gridlock. Concedes a senior Administration official: "If Congress accepts our budget, economic growth and inflation and interest rates will take care...
...Office of Management and Budget predicts that economic growth alone will reduce the deficit to $127 billion in 1990, yet Congress pegs the number at a more realistic $146 billion. But even pie-in-the-sky scenarios cannot trim the deficit nearly enough to satisfy the requirements of Gramm-Rudman...
...Bush is the defense budget, frozen at $291 billion after allowing for inflation, and the near sacrosanct $247 billion for Social Security. Unfortunately, those huge budgetary no-trespassing signs mean that only meat-cleaver slashes in the jumble of discretionary programs could possibly make the Bush proposal meet the Gramm-Rudman targets. But the President's team is not going to squander political capital on such a fool's errand; that messy job is left to Congress...
...that his Administration could drift for months without major victories -- or, worse, be burdened with a mortifying setback. Already, the uplifting sermons have begun to sound repetitious and a trifle hollow. A budget concordat with Congress would, of course, provide the tonic that Bush craves, but the Oct. 15 Gramm-Rudman deadline all but ensures that serious negotiations will be delayed until late summer. In the interim, Bush should have more than enough time to grapple with that transcendent -- but still unanswered -- question: What precisely does he want to accomplish as President...