The President vs. the Prognosticator
(J. Scott Applewhite - AP)
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Appearing on Fox News yesterday, former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan heard a vehement rebuttal to his criticism of the Bush administration's budget policies -- from the president himself, in a taped interview. Greenspan made scathing comments about the administration's free-spending ways in his autobiography, "The Age of Turbulence," released Monday. Here are Bush's comments and excerpts of Greenspan's response.
Bush: I would say that the record, our fiscal record, is admirable and good. After all, the deficit percentage to GDP is low, relative to the 30-year average. It's about 1.5 percent of GDP, which is, which is good. And we submitted a budget that shows that we can get it balanced. I would also argue that cutting taxes made a significant difference, not only in dealing with the recession and the attack in our country, but it made a significant difference in dealing with the deficit because a growing economy yielded more tax revenues, which allowed us to shrink the deficit. And so I would respectfully disagree with the characterizations of chairman Greenspan.
Greenspan: The issue is really not the short term. The president's numbers are correct. . . . The concern that I've had is what the potential for the budget deficit is when the baby boomers retire. . . . My basic problem is with the Republican Congress. My problem with the president is that he did not use the veto sufficiently. . . . He'd better start vetoing certain stuff because we are getting into the demographic issues wholly unprepared.
-- Neil Irwin
