Word: surplus
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...question du jour: Which party will be hurt the most by the reports of a shrinking federal surplus? U.S. Representatives and Senators, still scattered across the country for their August recess, are beginning to hear questions from constituents, many of whom are nervous: What might happen now that the pile of extra tax dollars isn't as huge as everyone originally thought? The politicians, not surprisingly, are busily crafting messages that blame the budget shortfall on the opposing party. What are the voters hearing? I decided to follow a Democrat and a Republican last week in hopes of finding...
...news wasn?t good: At the beginning of the year, when the surplus was still abundant, Hoyer had proposed increasing federal research money for chronic diseases like arthritis by $350 million for fiscal year 2002. The Bush administration had cut the program by $175 million, but Hoyer hoped the Appropriations Committee, on which he serves, would use the surplus to restore some of that funding...
...then, a lot of other things were changing too. As summer arrived, as the economy kept sputtering and Congress enacted a $1.35 trillion tax cut, those rosy surplus projections began to shrink. Military health-care costs rose faster than missile-defense bills. The budget situation became almost impossible. For months, many analysts had been saying the only way Congress might go along with Rumsfeld's reforms was if he sweetened the deal by sprinkling goodies on key districts. But now the extra money was drying up. Rumsfeld went to the White House in July to ask for $38 billion more...
...sure enough, Wednesday the White House?s accountants at the Office of Management and Budget had the numbers to prove it: When $157 billion in Social Security money is set aside, the federal budget surplus for 2002 - thanks to some nifty accounting - stands at a cool $1 billion. In other words, everything?s perfect...
...Republicans try to give away their hard-earned tax receipts: Find "spending priorities" that Americans would have preferred to $78 billion in tax cuts for 2002, and convince them to take their remorse out on the Republicans. (The Dems don?t have anything specific yet besides the Social Security surplus scare, but Dick Gephardt will be waving a list before long...