Greenspan Backs Higher Taxes, Less Government Spending
Kiplinger News
Speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations event in New York, Greenspan said that the nation's massive deficit - forecast recently by the Obama administration to be $1.47 trillion this year and $1.41 trillion next year - is limiting the private sector's ability to invest.
"I am in favor for the first time in my memory of raising taxes," he said. He had previously called for the George W. Bush tax cuts to expire at the end of this year, which would raise taxes for most Americans. But keeping the cuts in place would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the national deficit, he told the Council on Foreign Relations audience.
“Our choice is not between good and bad; it’s between terrible and worse,” Greenspan said. The nation has “a level of commitment … which I don’t think we can psychically meet.”.
Greenspan isn't the only laissez-faire economic conservative to come out in favor of higher taxes. In an August op-ed piece for the New York Times, President Ronald Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, noted that the nation's debt is 40 times larger than it was 40 years ago - citing what he called "the insidious doctrine that deficits don't matter if they result from tax cuts."
www.kiplinger.com/news/article.php/greenspan-comes-out-in-favor-of-higher-taxes-800066974.html
Sept. 15, 2010