Word: washingtonization
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Great American Budget Battle, Washington's answer to professional wrestling, has officially begun, all roars and growls and theatrical blows to the head. This week Congress will send the President a $792 billion tax-cut bill; he has promised to stomp on it. Clinton has pushed a $300 billion spending program, including a new prescription-drug program for Medicare; congressional fists are already clenched. There is talk of grand ideological warfare, of reckless spendthrift Democrats and reckless plutocrat-loving Republicans fighting over how to divvy up the glorious $3 trillion surplus. In this season's budget politics, much...
...most interesting thing about the phantom surplus is that by every indication, voters don't think it really exists either. But that has not prevented politicians on both sides from trying to woo them with proposals that Washington can't pay for. Republicans fanned out during their August recess to try to rally public support for their tax cuts--Please, let us give you more money!--but the polls showed a public unmoved. Voters said they would rather use the money, if it exists, to pay down the $5.6 trillion national debt. "People are genuinely fiscally conservative in this country...
...races and then quickly ran out of money, has been persuaded that the Reform Party, with its access to state ballots and millions of dollars in federal matching funds, can finally be the platform for his nationalist and anti-free-trade arguments and his anti-Washington populism. "My gut tells me he's going to make the shift," says Pat Choate, Perot's '96 running mate, who behind the scenes has been urging Buchanan to quit the G.O.P. "He's frozen out of the Republican Party. We'll give him an incredible forum...
...independent Buchanan run could hurt Gore too. "If he runs as a social conservative, it's going to help the Democrats," says Democratic stalwart James Carville. "If he runs as an economic nationalist, it's going to hurt the Democrats. And if he runs as an anti-Washington outsider, it's probably a wash...
...easing of sanctions is symbolically important in continuing Washington?s policy of using economic inducements to coax better behavior out of the rogue state. Congressional critics might add that it could also be taken as a vindication of North Korea?s policy of extorting economic concessions out of the West by behaving badly and threatening worse. Five years ago, North Korea agreed to dismantle its nuclear weapons program in exchange for a massive energy assistance program from South Korea, the U.S. and Japan. When those countries were slow to deliver on promised energy aid, Pyongyang feinted toward rebuilding its nuclear...