Word: neill
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Neill's side is winning. The deficit-reduction plan that Greenspan pushed on a reluctant Bill Clinton in 1993 is the foundation of the prosperity of the last eight years. Balanced budgets, a mainstay of Republicanism in the '50s, were one of Newt Gingrich's rallying cries in the '90s, and are the one thing everybody can agree on in 2001, especially with those city-of-gold surpluses shimmering on the horizon...
...mention that Saint Greenspan himself, whose blessing of the Bush tax cut it will be O'Neill's first task to secure, will make fiscal responsibility his first condition...
...Neill and the Fed chairman worked for Ford together; their continuing friendship was the main reason why he was picked, and will be the main reason he'll likely be confirmed before the sun sets on Inauguration Day. The convivial relations between Greenspan and the Clinton team have been well documented; Greenspan and at least one member of the Bush team will be even closer...
...Economically speaking, O'Neill is this Bush administration's Colin Powell - unimpeachably qualified and reassuringly pragmatic. He vowed Wednesday to continue Clinton's strong dollar policy, a semi-sacred cow on Wall Street, but his business/manufacturing background makes him sympathetic to trade deficits. He's brave enough to have once backed an energy tax, but quick enough to have disavowed that stance soon after getting the call from the Austin oilmen. In short, he's the kind of guy who can talk about a trillion-dollar tax cut without everyone worrying that George W. Bush has ordered all White House...
...Whether he and the supply-sider Lindsey will get along - and which of them will have Bush's ear on fiscal policy if they don't - is another question entirely. And neither O'Neill, Lindsey or Bush has given much public thought to the economies beyond American borders. But for the time being, people from Wall Street to Main Street just getting to know O'Neill can imagine him as sort of a Greenspan in street clothes, a Republican fiscal pragmatist who loves crunching numbers and getting his hands dirty, even if his plainspoken days may soon be behind...