Word: surplus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...First, Bush swore in his new treasury secretary and fiscal emissary to Congress, Paul O'Neill, with the usual rhetoric: "Because our government has a surplus does not mean that every American family has a surplus. Many families are feeling squeezed by high energy prices and credit-card debt. We need to give them their own money back...
...Then the government backed him up. Late Tuesday, the Congressional Budget Office informed members of Congress that it expects the surplus to swell to $5.6 trillion over the next decade, $1 trillion higher than the budgeteers' July estimate and about $600 billion more than the Clinton administration's final projection last month...
...know how Greenspan feels about reducing surpluses via additional spending - he doesn't like it. And that leaves tax cuts, which by halfway through the speech were an integral part of a budget strategy "that is consistent with a preemptive smoothing of the glide path to zero federal debt" and aimed at "making the on-budget surplus economically inconsequential when the debt is effectively paid...
...During the Q&A that followed, Maryland Democrat Paul Sarbanes accused Greenspan of "making a considerable contribution to that dissipation" with all this surplus talk, but then followed that with a major faux pas: "I take it interest rates will be reduced further next week?" (Greenspan only smiled behind his hand, and the betting remains that Sarbanes is right.) The dissipation - Greenspan bemoaned in particular the pork-barrel parade at the end of October's budget negotiations - is a Hill thing, and there the responsibility stays. The message: If Bush's tax cut busts the budget, it'll be your...
...Greenspan still gave the tax cut as good a sell as Bush ever could, though his newfound sense of urgency about "reducing the surplus" isn't likely to start any rallies in the streets - or across the aisle. Greenspan is still the pinnacle of credibility when it comes to economic matters, and the fact that he's not worried one whit about this tax cut's potential for disaster will make it hard to resist...