Word: troughs
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...campaign, Bush's tax-cut plan seemed too grandiose to many voters. But layoffs, slipping economic indicators and a blessing from Fed chairman Alan Greenspan made the idea credible - and now Washington can smell a big tax cut the way hogs smell slop. Politicians are scrambling to the trough. Some of their schemes are well-intended - Senate majority leader Trent Lott wants to change the alternative minimum tax so it doesn't take such a big bite out of middle-class taxpayers - but all of them threaten to grow the beast. Lott's plan would bring Bush's plan...
...Even though the tax bill Congress passes won't be an exact copy of his plan, Bush believes he's already won. "The question is not whether there should be a tax cut but when and how much," says one of his aides. No matter how crowded the trough gets, Bush thinks he'll get credit for the feast...
...programs, as long as they don't flood a thriving economy with cash and pose an inflation risk. (By his own job description, Greenspan's main obsession is fighting inflation.) But Greenspan is fully aware that this business cycle, even in its current flattened form, is closer to the trough than the apex, and that's largely his doing. Tax cuts may not be the answer to the slowdown, but they probably wouldn't hurt...
...polls closed in Kentucky and Indiana, where voters apparently get up really, really early or just don't have jobs. The major networks have joined their cable brethren at the election trough. And that gentle flutter you hear all across the TV spectrum is the sound of hands being tipped: the hints that "it looks like we're in for a long night," the suggestions that all is not well within certain Senate campaigns...
...possible that prosperous times will soon fade. Profits are up, and record numbers of Americans are at work. Yet the paradox of a market economy is that stock investors get scorched near the end of a robust expansion, while good times still roar. The reverse is true at the trough of a recession, when times are toughest...