Word: surplus
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Suddenly, the huge surplus has vanished. Forget money for your aching joints, Hoyer told the seniors. The Office of Management and Budget was about to release figures revealing that with Bush's tax cut "we have spent the surplus as of today," he said. "It didn't take ten years to spend the surplus. It took 10 weeks, from the time the president signed the tax bill." Hoyer, who opposed Bush's large tax cut, knew this crowd would be disturbed by the new budget numbers coming out of Washington. The day before, Bush threw out his favorite...
...sped to Hoyer?s next speaking engagement, an aide handed his boss an Associated Press story reporting figures the Office of Management and Budget had just released. The tax cut, coupled with a declining economy, had indeed soaked up practically the entire current surplus, as Democrats had warned. The non-Social Security surplus would be just $1 billion in 2001 and not much more than that in 2002. Over 10 years, the non-Social Security surplus would be just $575 billion, down $850 billion from the forecast in April...
...farmers recited bushels-full of statistics on crop yields and prices. They were hoping that the farm spending bill Congress was now considering would offer some relief. Finally a cotton farmer raised his hand to get to the bottom line. "My question is," he asked Frist, "if the surplus has gone away, are there going to be budget constraints so that it's difficult to pass this farm bill? Is the money there to pass this farm bill?" Even with the shrinking numbers, Frist reminded the farmers, the total surplus is still "huge...
...Every dollar coming in on Social Security will be spent on Social Security," he promised. "And every dollar coming in on Medicare will be spent on Medicare. The surplus can happen only if you keep the economy good." But for now, he admitted, "I wouldn't want to leave you with any sense that the money is absolutely going to be there for everything we want...
...With an eye on controlling both houses, Frist, who heads up the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the group in charge of returning the Senate to the GOP in 2002, closely monitors how folks in his state (and in other states with Republican senators) are reacting to the shrinking surplus. He knows it will be a favorite topic in attacks from across the aisle, but stands firm in his message. "The Democrats clearly are going to use it," he told me. "Our commitment is to balance the budget and to fuel the economy. The way you can do that is with...