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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (118363)	12/20/2000 5:10:49 PM
From: TimbaBear	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

After that, why spend money that we might not have to by paying off bonds early? You are assuming that we don't have a surplus here(or might not)....wouldn't that same assumption be a valid reason for not cutting taxes?....I mean, why force yourself to borrow money by reducing your income?....paying down the debt reduces future capital requirements. and all would be paid in at least slightly inflated dollars, so paying early would lose a fair amount of money. If inflation is truly low, then the cost of debt service will be higher than the inflation and it makes sense to pay down the debt....the inflation case you make only makes sense in a high inflation rate environment(which seems more likely to happen now). I am therefore presuming that we would hold money in reserve against future contingencies, and take the lock box image as the correct one. I don't know why you make that presumption....unless you think that the money in that lockbox would earn a higher rate of return than the interest rates being charged on the debt. The other main proposal was to pay down the debt, not to store the money. The "lockbox" phrase came from protecting the Social Security Revenues from being spent on General Budget items.