Word: surplus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...alarmed, positive but not Pollyannaish. This kind of delicate hand holding may be as much as any President can do to alter the course of a sprawling national economy. Having already deployed his most powerful weapon, tax cuts, and shackled himself to a promise not to spend Social Security surplus money, he is left to temper the worry during the wait. But the longer it lasts, the more the downturn is foreshortening Bush's plans and expectations, endangering everything he wants to get done in office. The downturn has taken chunks out of the magical budget surplus, threatening the President...
...that weren't hard enough, Bush must battle the recession while he fights with Congress. Democrats are accusing the other party of recklessly wasting the surplus and endangering Social Security. The White House insists that it can juggle the economy and the budget battle without dropping its focus on the rest of the President's agenda. Bush needs to speak out enough about the slowdown so voters don't think he's detached, his advisers say, but he shouldn't talk about it so much that he keeps the woe on the front page--or worse, adds to darkening consumer...
...letting no cable show go unvisited in order to blame the hard times on the President. They declare with straight faces that the slowdown didn't "really" kick in until moments after Bush took the oath of office, and they delight in the opportunity provided by the shrinking surplus to accuse Republicans of raiding the Social Security trust fund and "endangering our seniors." Though intellectually suspect, it's a potent attack. Republicans returned to Congress after the recess to an internal poll that showed that voters' concern about the future of their retirement system had doubled...
...second item on the agenda was money. There would be no arguments: A truce had been called in the bitter political war over dipping into the hundreds of billions of dollars piling up in the Social Security surplus. They'd dip into the fund. The men huddled in Hastert's office debated how much would be needed. The White House already had told Congress it wanted $20 billion to help rebuild the damaged Pentagon, deal with the New York catastrophe and bolster security. But $20 billion might not be enough, one of the leaders said. "You're probably right," Lott...
...second item on the agenda was money. There would be no arguments: A truce had been called in the bitter political war over dipping into the hundreds of billions of dollars piling up in the Social Security surplus. They'd dip into the fund. The men huddled in Hastert's office debated how much would be needed. The White House already had told Congress it wanted $20 billion to help rebuild the damaged Pentagon, deal with the New York catastrophe and bolster security. But $20 billion might not be enough, one of the leaders said. "You're probably right," Lott...