Bill Bennett: “When Mr. Greenspan comes before the Joint Economic Committee, I will explore that with him in depth, so we can get it…”

“When Mr. Greenspan comes before the Joint Economic Committee, I will explore that with him in depth, so we can get it nailed down. The point I want to make off the Senator's chart, where he has the black line demonstrating the impact of the President's policy and the green line representing the base, he shows the President's policy would indeed produce a significant beneficial change in 2004. The question, of course, is whether or not the projections beyond that are reliable. Once again, my experience in this body is that everything gets changed year to year, as you go forward. To get us out of this soft patch we are in, it would be very nice to have that kind of a spike in 2004. But even if we accept the chart exactly as it is presented, is it not true that the black line ends up, long-term, above the green line? That in the years out there, it shows the long-term impact of the President's proposed policy is a better economic result than the baseline, and that, if it is true, is the argument I am making that the long-term structural change of the President's proposal will give us, long term, a healthier economy, and long term is where the Senator and I both agree the problem lies.”