Greenspan's Green Light
The Washington Post , Los Angeles
Times , and USA Today all agree: the top story is Alan Greenspan's
statement to a congressional committee that the U.S. economy is perking along
so nicely that the Federal Reserve won't be raising interest rates any time
real soon. The New York Times
plays that story above the fold, but reserves its top right spot for the news
that President Clinton yesterday renewed his call for means-tested Medicare
premiums. Another bit of news convergence: both the NYT and WP
have front page stories reporting that Switzerland's major banks are publishing
a list today of about 2,000 of their dormant WWII-era accounts that may include
the assets of Holocaust victims.
Greenspan's comments to the House Banking subcommittee were a green light
for Wall St., which responded with a two percent run-up to a new high of
8,061.65. The only slight damper was the Fed chairman's remark that the money
supply will have to be tightened "at some point to foster sustainable growth
and low inflation." Such comments prompted some committee members to criticize
Greenspan for being insensitive to working Americans. Indeed, according to the
WP , "The true constraint on the economy, Greenspan told the committee,
is that the nation does not have enough people who don't have jobs...."
Clinton's stance on Medicare comes one day after Republican budget
negotiators, fearing the election consequences of raising anybody's premiums,
abandoned means testing. Clinton's explicit intent is to give the budgeteers
political courage: "I would be happy to defend the vote of any member of
Congress, Democrat or Republican, who votes for this."
Much of the current political maneuvering has to do with the trivial-seeming
detail of who gets to collect the extra premiums. According to the
NYT , "The president, responding to Republican complaints that premium
increases would look like tax increases, also proposed that the Treasury
Department, rather than the Internal Revenue Service, collect the payments for
higher premiums from elderly taxpayers, who would make the checks out to the
Medicare Trust Fund instead of the IRS." The paper goes on to quote the
skeptical response of Rep. Bill Archer, the Republican chairman of the House
Ways and Means Committee: "The only collection arm I know at Treasury is the
IRS." Even White House spokesman Mike McCurry admits, says the Times ,
that the Clinton payment suggestion "is a cosmetic solution to a cosmetic
problem."
In a WP "Style" piece, reporter Lloyd Grove profiles self-appointed
Paula Jones spokesperson Susan Carpenter-McMillan, a Los Angeles-based former
anti-abortion activist. She tells Grove, "I will never deny that when I first
heard about this case I said, 'Okay, good. We're gonna get that little
slimeball.'" Carpenter-McMillan goes on to give her opinion of James Carville:
"I love Mary Matalin. I don't know what she sees in him. He must be great in
bed."
The Wall Street Journal 's "Tax Report" states that according to
the latest IRS statistics, the threshold for making it into the top 1 percent
of earners is an adjusted gross income of at least $195,726. The 5 percent mark
is $91,226, and the 50 percent figure is $21,802. The column also reports that
Rep. Bob Schaffer, a Colorado Republican opposed to the estate tax, describes
his position as "No taxation without respiration."
Maureen Dowd's column in the Times today offers a peek at some of the
slogans to be featured in upcoming ABC-TV spots. Slogans like, "Don't worry,
you've got billions of brain cells."
