George Voinovich: “The thing that impressed me, when we met with Alan Greenspan, was the fact--and he has said this publicly since the time…”

“The thing that impressed me, when we met with Alan Greenspan, was the fact--and he has said this publicly since the time we had our private meeting with him--that the most significant thing we could do to aid the economy was to eliminate double taxation, eliminate the tax on dividends, although it was a short-term benefit, he said, but something systemic needs to be done to better the Tax Code. You can argue the dividend issue any way you want, but what I usually do is ask the people back in Ohio how they feel about it. No. 1, many of our businesses that have defined pension plans, because their stock is down, are going to be asked for an enormous amount of money to be deposited in those fine pension plans, which they don't have. Other corporations have told me that if their stock price gets a bump, they will issue stock and they will get cash that way so they won't have to borrow it the way they are now borrowing the money. In addition, there are many people, such as my son George, who have retirement accounts, who have seen those retirement accounts go down in value. There are millions of Americans in that same position.”