Word: grammes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Alas, poor Gramm-Rudman. This year the federal deficit was supposed to start receding as a prelude to the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction targets of $144 billion for 1987 and zero for 1991. Instead, 1986 has turned into another year of record red ink. Last week the Office of Management and Budget predicted that when the accountants close the books on fiscal 1986 in September, the federal deficit will stand at a stupefying $230 billion, $27 billion more than the Government predicted in February. Said a chagrined OMB Director James Miller: "It is not something I'm proud...
...Washington last week, House Speaker Tip O'Neill announced plans for a sweeping antidrug bill that would include provisions for more federal funds for expanded narcotics-interdiction efforts, addict treatment and public education. The new legislation could end up costing the government $5 billion a year. "If it breaks Gramm-Rudman," said O'Neill, "I'll ask the Rules Committee to waive the targets." Not to be left behind by the Democrats, a Reagan Administration Cabinet council met late last week to discuss a new White House initiative in the drug...
Before it was even enacted it was something of a joke, laughingly likened to the girl who, unable to say no, buys a chastity belt and throws away the key. In December, Congress passed, and President Reagan signed into law, the Gramm- Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985. Cast as an amendment to a measure raising the U.S. debt ceiling above $2 trillion, Gramm-Rudman was the sugarcoating to help embarrassed Congressmen swallow that gargantuan figure. The law required that annual federal deficits, now hovering at the $200 billion level, be reduced in stages...
...admission that Government lacked the wit or the courage or both to make its own decisions on spending. "It's a bad idea whose time has come," admitted New Hampshire Republican Senator Warren Rudman, one of the bill's co-authors (the others: Texas Republican Senator Phil Gramm and South Carolina Democratic Senator Ernest Hollings). New Jersey Democrat Peter Rodino, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, called it a "flagrant abdication of congressional responsibility." Last week the Supreme Court leveled the ultimate criticism, ruling that a key provision of GrammRudman is unconstitutional...
...court let stand the rest of Gramm-Rudman, including the dictum that the deficit be cleared in five years. "The law is alive and well," said Rudman. Undeniably, though, the decision stripped Gramm-Rudman of its muscle. The sensitive business of deciding what to cut was tossed back into the political arena just as re-election campaigns intensify...