Word: surplus
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...Democrats are also planning to stick to the argument that a big tax cut means you can forget about using the burgeoning federal budget surplus to pay down the national debt. In an adroit bit of political gamesmanship, Bill Clinton played up the goal of debt elimination last week when he unveiled new White House budget calculations that show the total surplus over the next 10 years rising to nearly $5 trillion, an $800 billion increase over the last estimate issued just six months ago. ?We should be shooting for a debt-free America by the end of the decade...
...which case the main weapon of recession fighting would rest with Greenspan. All the same, Bush is hoping that he can get the Fed chairman to signal in some way that he too would agree to a big slice, perhaps during his upcoming testimony before Congress. Greenspan thinks the surplus should be used to pay down the national debt, but he would accept seeing some of it go back as a tax cut before he would allow Congress to use it for more spending programs...
...surplus that seemed to go as far as the eye could see suddenly made tax cuts a stump speech staple again. "It's your money," Bush used to say - and soon the targeted vs. across-the-board debate reared its head as a partisan issue. But in the fight for the swing voters who had slowly learned to love fiscal discipline, tax cuts were not high on their presidential to-do list. Perhaps the best that could be said of Bush's $1.3-trillion-dollar baby is that it didn't cost him the election...
...First, we can afford it. Despite the gloomy economic outlook in the short term, reinforcements are coming. In February, the Congressional Budget Office announces a new 10-year surplus projection that is already expected to add up to $6 trillion. That's $1.4 trillion more than the current figure...
...dealbreaker will be fiscal discipline. Greenspan's own view of the surplus's long-term viability will be a major factor, and you can bet he's skeptical about not only the wisdom of any 10-year economic forecasts but politicians' ability to keep spending in check. But here the CBO's new numbers should come into play again - that surplus may be part fantasy, but at least it's getting larger...