Greenspan, Rubin Say Any Stimulus Plan Should Be `Significant'
By Rob Wells
Washington, Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin told Senators that if they pursue an economic stimulus package, it should be ``significant,'' perhaps as high as $100 billion, participants in the meeting said.
Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus of Montana and Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the committee's top Republican, said both Rubin and Greenspan repeated that it's too early to determine whether any additional tax cuts or spending are needed to stimulate the economy.
``There are a lot of `ifs' and the data could go in either direction,'' Baucus said. Greenspan and Rubin met with the Senate tax writing panel in a closed session this morning to discuss the state of the economy and options for Congress to boost economic activity.
The U.S. economy already was slowing when it was jolted by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, which forced a temporary shut down of the airline industry and caused other economic disruption. U.S. stock indexes declined every day last week in the first trading after the disaster.
Greenspan and Rubin said that if the decision is made to push an economic stimulus package, it should be substantial.
``Someone said that to do anything, quote, significant,'' Baucus said, ``it should be 1 percent of GDP and that would be $100 billion.''
``We heard much higher numbers today on the stimulus package from our two experts than I anticipated to hear,'' said Grassley said. |
