She was Vice Chair at the Federal Reserve from 1996 to 1999, OMB Director from 1994 to 1996, and was the founding Director of the CBO, a position she held from 1975 to 1983. Thank you all for coming here this morning. I m looking forward to a vigorous and enlightening discussion. That is not what the CBO is saying at all. It is just as likely to be too low as it is to be too high.
Large surpluses make it too easy to increase government spending and mean tax rates are too high.
Others have treated the surplus estimate as if it were an imaginary number. But the surplus estimate is every bit as real as the deficit estimates that led to a major tax increase back in 1993. We are now in our fourth consecutive year of real and growing surpluses . If we continue along the baseline budget path, we are on track to reach the minimum level of public debt. If the government continues to run surpluses after we ve reached that minimum level of debt, the government must accumulate private assets.