Greenspan Testifies Before Committee on the Aging

This morning Alan Greenspan testified at a Congressional hearing on the Economics of Retirement. In his testimony before the Senate Special Committee on the Aging, Greenspan restated his support for the creation of private Social Security accounts. He is a proponent of these accounts partly because he believes diverting payroll taxes away from a fund that can be spent by Congress would allow lawmakers to see the true size of the budget deficit, and would pressure them to reduce it. He stated, "We need, in effect, to make the phantom 'lock boxes' around the trust fund real." Senator Clinton (D-NY) responded to these comments with criticism for Mr. Greenspan, whose 2001 testimony to Congress urging tax cuts to avoid a surplus, she said, "helped blow the lid off the lock box." The Bush tax cuts that Greenspan originally supported are currently largely responsible for our record-level budget deficit, and the fact that Congress must now cut spending on domestic programs in order to deal with this deficit. To read more about the hearing, click here.
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