Word: surplus
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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...
...White House press secretary Ari Fleischer was happy to add a few bangs to the tax-cut drum. "We are seeing a government that is awash in surplus money, even with an economy that is softening from where it used...
...total projected surplus of $5.610 trillion, $2.488 trillion would come from the Social Security system, the Budget Office said, and, by agreement between the two parties (and Bush), will be off limits. The rest, $3.122 trillion over the next 10 years, is up for grabs, and setting half aside for tax cuts "for everybody who pays taxes," as Bush put it Tuesday (that would be a reaffirmation of his insistence on across-the-board cuts) is looking more and more reasonable...
...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...