Greenspan Criticizes Bush for Money, but not for Duty
Peggy Noonan’s “Now He Tells Us: If only they’d listened to Greenspan! And they might have, if only he’d spoken clearly” is good on how the former Fed chairman has saved his criticism of pork barrel spending for his book rather than making it when it might have actually stopped the spending:
In the book he fiercely opposes the Bush tax cuts. He feared the budget surpluses enjoyed in 2000 would be transformed into long-term deficits. He worried that entitlement spending would leave “a very large hole in future budgets.” Not facing this was “a failure.” He disdains the Great Pork Spree of the ’00s. …
But when the tax cuts, and the impact of spending, were being debated, Mr. Greenspan allowed his congressional testimony to be interpreted as supportive of the Bush plan. And he did this even though he had been warned in advance by those who’d seen his testimony that it would be seen as an endorsement of the tax plan….
But he never quite cleared it up, not at the time. He does it now, with the book, and after the advance. As a writer I am in passionate support of large advances, but $8.5 million to tell the American people what he should have told them when his views might have had an impact?
September 21st, 2007 at 2:50 pm
Good point. I had similar thoughts when I read reviews of his book.