Word: surpluses
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...Clinton Administration's drive to pare the U.S. budget deficit, which has succeeded beyond anyone's wildest fantasies. Among other things, he noted, the fiscal achievement turned what government economists in the mid-1990s projected would be a $400 billion deficit in fiscal 1999 into a $120 billion surplus. At the same time, individual stock-market investors are behaving almost like professional venture capitalists, ignoring short-term profits--or the lack of them--in favor of long-term gains. "There's been a real strengthening of equity culture," he said...
...politics. He couldn't get enough Republicans to vote for a plan that smelled like a tax increase, even though its offsetting tax cuts were much larger. The bill was dead--and that, says Laney, "is when he grabbed his little piece of his pie." The $1 billion budget surplus was still on the table, and Bush used it to fund a $1 billion property-tax cut that passed easily. He didn't get his ambitious reshaping of the tax code, but he got a tax cut to run on. (In 1999 he got another--the two biggest in Texas...
Meanwhile, it has not escaped notice on Capitol Hill that McCain's approach of using the surplus to pay down the debt, rather than spending it on huge tax cuts, is gaining traction with voters, including conservative Republicans. "Bush can't sell a tax cut, because it's wildly unpopular," says one who has been involved in G.O.P. strategy discussions. "Debt reduction would be much smarter...
...care entitlements (insurance for children, a prescription-drug benefit) and even, in the vaguest of terms, universal health care. McCain has also been butting heads with Bush on the question of tax cuts--arguing that the truly conservative position is to keep the tax cut modest and use the surplus to save Social Security and pay down the debt. Bush calls that a Clintonian approach--on Friday in South Carolina he began airing TV spots saying as much--but according to the new TIME/CNN poll, nearly three-quarters of likely G.O.P. primary voters in the state agree with McCain. Does...
...mechanics but also in its ideas. He has mostly forsaken large-scale policy speeches in favor of town-hall Q.s and A.s, where issues can be dealt with in catchphrases. His few attempts at concreteness tend to collapse in self-contradiction. He wants to use the budget surplus to shore up Social Security and preserve it for future generations; at the same time, he would undermine it by letting workers deposit part of their payroll taxes in private accounts. Long an advocate of a flat tax with minimal loopholes, McCain proposed a tax plan riddled with loopholes for the middle...