| 摘要 | Lawrence B. Lindsey, the former Federal Reserve governor who is now George W. Bush’s chief economic adviser, sees himself as a mere technician, helping to turn the presidential candidate’s vision into nuts-and-bolts programs.
“Governor Bush has a very clear idea of where he wants to take the country,” Mr. Lindsey said the other evening, winding down after a hectic week of helping him make his first big economic policy speech of the campaign. “We’re there to provide suggestions on the best way to accomplish the policy.”
Mr. Lindsey, an affable, 45-year-old Harvard-trained economist who worked in the White House during both the Reagan and Bush administrations, has been around politics long enough to know when to defer to the boss.
But Mr. Lindsey clearly has substantial influence in honing the campaign’s message and putting flesh on the Texas governor’s “compassionate conservatism” theme. Equally important, he provides policy gravitas to a candidate who constantly confronts whispers that he is a lightweight.
In the year and a half since they first met and began discussing economic policy, Mr. Lindsey has covered a lot of ground with Mr. Bush, from international finance and trade to Social Security and the Federal Reserve. But on no subject has he had a more direct influence than on tax cuts, the centerpiece of any Republican platform. While by all accounts the $483 billion tax-cutting proposal that Mr. Bush unveiled this month was shaped by the candidate’s own philosophy, its details and presentation carried Mr. Lindsey’s stamp.
Mr. Lindsey, for example, does not see a clear case for reducing the tax rate on long-term capital gains below the current 20 percent, at least not at the expense of reducing marginal income tax rates, but he is much keener on eliminating the inheritance tax on large estates. The Bush plan bucked supply-side orthodoxy by skipping a capital-gains tax cut, but it included a phaseout of the estate tax.
And while a strong believer in lower income tax rates, Mr. Lindsey is not a fan of the single-rate flat tax advocated by other Republicans including Steve Forbes, whose candidacy is dogging Mr. Bush from the right. Mr. Bush’s plan keeps the progressive income tax system intact.
Mr. Lindsey has warned for several years that the economy may soon turn downward, and Mr. Bush presented his tax plan in part as insurance against a recession.
“It’s very clear when you look at the Bush tax plan that it has Larry Lindsey’s fingerprints all over it,” said Stephen Moore, director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute, a conservative research group.
With elections often turning on pocketbook issues, an economic plan is as much a part of a presidential campaign as the stump speech or the fund-raiser. And as the presidential race moves toward the first primaries, economists and other policy experts are building economic platforms for each of the candidates, motivated variously by principle and ideology, the lure of power and the media spotlight, and the promise of a big job if the outcome is right.
ON the Democratic side, Vice President Al Gore, eager to distance himself from Washington and President Clinton on many issues, is making a conspicuous exception for the administration’s economic record. He is relying more for advice and policy prescriptions on insiders like Gene Sperling, the White House economic policy adviser, than on the outside economists in his camp, like Alan Blinder, the Princeton economist and former Fed vice chairman.
Bill Bradley, the former New Jersey senator whose campaign cultivates an image of plain-speaking insurgency and who keeps his own counsel on most policy matters, announced last week that he had two establishment heavyweights in his camp: Paul Volcker, the former Fed chairman, and Henry Kaufman, the Wall Street economist.
Among the Republican candidates, Mr. Forbes has a whole stable of supply-side economists, headed by Lawrence Kudlow, a former Reagan administration economist now with Wertheim Schroder, an investment firm. Senator John McCain of Arizona has no formal economic team but relies on an informal network of contacts from his two decades in Washington and his chairmanship of the Commerce Committee.
But needing to educate himself about a host of complex topics — and eager to tweak traditional Republican thinking on some economic policy issues — Mr. Bush has assembled a larger and more prominent roster of economic advisers than any of his rivals. In addition to Mr. Lindsey, the 10-member team includes Michael J. Boskin, who was chief White House economist under President Bush and is now at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution; Martin S. Feldstein, the Harvard economist who is head of the National Bureau of Economic Research; John F. Cogan, who was a budget aide to President Reagan; and John B. Taylor, an expert on monetary policy. Mr. Cogan and Mr. Taylor are also at Stanford.
Developing Mr. Bush’s proposals is a role that in some ways seems tailor-made for Mr. Lindsey — and enlisting him is good politics for Mr. Bush. Mr. Lindsey made his name in Washington during the 1980’s with an academic defense of tax cuts as a spur to economic growth. That endeared him to the Republican Party’s supply-side wing, a group that felt betrayed by President Bush and harbors suspicions about Governor Bush’s commitment to reducing taxes.
Yet even as he has advocated conservative orthodoxy on reducing marginal income tax rates, Mr. Lindsey has challenged it by urging his party to do more to fight poverty and to provide low-income people with better access to housing. At the Federal Reserve, where officials often seem cloistered in their offices, Mr. Lindsey was known for trooping through subsidized housing projects and warning bankers to make sure that race and barriers to obtaining credit did not discourage homeownership. “You could see in Larry’s approach some of the precursors to compassionate conservatism, whatever that means,” said Mr. Blinder, who served at the Fed with Mr. Lindsey.
To a presidential candidate trying to woo his party’s conservative base while seeking to redefine its ideology to appeal to moderates, Mr. Lindsey’s credentials as a supply-sider with a heart fit perfectly. “They were simpatico from the get-go,” said Al Hubbard, a longtime friend of Mr. Bush who worked with Mr. Lindsey at the White House and introduced the two last year.
Yet in other ways, Mr. Lindsey is an odd choice as a top aide to any presidential candidate, especially the congenitally upbeat Mr. Bush. Mr. Lindsey is renowned for his bearish views on the stock market and his consistent predictions that the strong economy is on the verge of a painful downturn, positions that raise questions about his skills as a forecaster.
Eighteen months ago, when the Dow Jones industrial average was at 8,500, he said publicly that stock prices were overvalued and that he had sold all his equity holdings so he could sleep better at night. The Dow closed on Friday at 11,224.70.
And with the current business expansion just months from becoming the longest in the nation’s history, Mr. Lindsey warned recently that a downturn in the business cycle was near.
Under the glare of media attention as the campaign has heated up, Mr. Lindsey has moderated his views — but just a bit.
“I have a lot of faith about the long-term strength of the economy and in the positive changes that have happened over the last 20 years in reducing taxes and regulation,” Mr. Lindsey said. “But I don’t think we’ve repealed the business cycle, and I think that financial markets are probably more optimistic than they should be about the course of the business cycle from here on out.”
In many ways, Mr. Lindsey has always been outspoken, at least by Washington standards. Four years ago, while still at the Fed and making $123,000 a year, Mr. Lindsey was turned down for a charge card by Toys “R” Us. Eager to make a point about the fallibility of credit reports, Mr. Lindsey went public with his experience.
It turned out that his credit report showed many inquiries about his financial history, in part because he was refinancing a loan at the time. The inquiries raised a red flag, which Toys “R” Us and the bank issuing its credit cards did not check further.
The episode had a happy ending. Mr. Lindsey said that nearly all big credit card issuers came to him at the Fed to say they would adopt a new approach: People rejected for credit by a software program would get a second look by a human being to see if there were mitigating circumstances.
“The problem I had was that we’re increasingly using computers to make consumer credit decisions and taking human decision-making out of the process,” Mr. Lindsey said.
BORN in Peekskill, N.Y., the son of public school teachers, Mr. Lindsey grew up intending to become a lawyer, and with far more liberal views than he holds now. While at Bowdoin College in Maine, he got early exposure to supply and demand by starting a hot-dog stand, and exposure to politics as a volunteer for George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee. As his interest in policy grew, he moved decidedly to the right.
“The lesson we learned from the Great Society and the 1970’s is that those objectives of a better life for everyone are fine, but big government is not going to be the one to provide it,” he said. “The question we have is what can we conservatives do, we who believe in the power of the individual and the market, to solve the problems that liberalism has failed to solve.”
Part of Mr. Lindsey’s answer is on display in Mr. Bush’s tax plan. Acting on Mr. Bush’s order that the proposal address the ways in which high marginal tax rates hurt taxpayers at all income levels, Mr. Lindsey and the rest of the economic team spent months debating not just how much to reduce rates for the wealthy and the upper middle class, but also how to aid the working poor.
People earning $20,000 to $25,000 a year can face some of the highest marginal tax rates in the system. At those income levels, many people begin losing the benefits of the earned income tax credit, which helps people whose incomes are below or just above the poverty line. Seeing that quirk as a barrier to entry to the middle class, Mr. Lindsey and his colleagues settled on a plan that reduces the lowest rate to 10 percent and doubles the per-child credit to $1,000.
“One of the strengths of the Bush plan — which has many weaknesses — is its effort to reduce the high marginal tax rates paid by the working poor,” Mr. Blinder said. “Among supply-side conservatives there is typically remarkably little concern with the plight of the poor in general and with the very high marginal tax rates paid by the poor.”
Having spent nearly all of his professional career in Washington, including five years as a Fed governor ending in early 1997, Mr. Lindsey said he originally intended to remain neutral during the Republican primaries, in part because he had ties to a number of candidates, including Lamar Alexander and Dan Quayle. Then Mr. Hubbard introduced him to Mr. Bush. After traveling to Austin for three long sessions with the governor last year, Mr. Lindsey jumped when Mr. Bush asked him to join his team.
“Having the right president is important, and I think I found the right guy,” Mr. Lindsey said. “He’s a natural leader. He’s got good instincts. He absorbs things quickly and he’s comfortable with himself.”
Mr. Lindsey helped pull together the other members of the team, many of whom worked in the White House during the 1980’s and have strongly held positions of their own. He has helped to brief Mr. Bush on a variety of subjects and to prepare him for debates. And he is working with the rest of the team on detailed proposals for topics like overhauling Social Security and improving access to health care.
The group met irregularly for much of the last year, starting even before Mr. Bush announced he would run. The members have gathered in Austin, in Washington and once at Mr. Boskin’s home in California; they hold regular conference calls. Technically the group is managed by Mr. Hubbard, not Mr. Lindsey, so that Mr. Lindsey is free to advocate positions, rather than play the role of honest broker among competing views. And there have been some disagreements. As the tax plan was completed, for example, the 10 members were evenly divided over whether the top income tax rate should be reduced to 30 percent or 33 percent from 39.6 percent. Mr. Bush ultimately decided on 33 percent.
“It’s a very collegial group that’s worked well together,” Mr. Hubbard said. “That doesn’t mean there haven’t been disagreements, but for the most part they haven’t been about what’s best for the economy. They’ve been about what works best on the political side, and ultimately that’s the governor’s call.”
WITH the tax plan out of the way, Mr. Lindsey — who is working for the campaign as a volunteer — is again spending more time at what he calls his day jobs. Those are a chair at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research group, where he is working on a book about housing, and his consulting firm, Economic Strategies Inc., whose clients are financial institutions and large corporations in the United States, Asia and Europe.
He seems likely, though, to be back in the thick of politics in coming months if Mr. Bush goes ahead with an approach, backed by Mr. Lindsey, to use much of the projected federal budget surplus to finance a partial privatization of Social Security. And should Mr. Bush be elected president, Mr. Lindsey and his colleagues on the economic team would no doubt have plum jobs available to them — from Treasury secretary on down.
“We haven’t talked about it and we shouldn’t,” Mr. Lindsey said of post-election daydreams. “My wife and I have said, ‘Let’s do this through the election and see what happens.’ But by all means I’d like to have only one job after the election.”
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CORRECTION-DATE: December 19, 1999, Sunday
CORRECTION: An article last Sunday about Lawrence B. Lindsey, chief economic adviser in the presidential campaign of George W. Bush, referred incorrectly to a disagreement among members of Mr. Bush’s economic team in recommending a reduction in the top federal income tax rate. The team was divided between two main options for reducing the rate — to 30 percent or 35 percent, not 30 or 33; in his plan, Mr. Bush decided on 33.
GRAPHIC: Photos: George W. Bush has economists who appeal to both center and right. (Andrea Mohin/The New York Times)(pg. 1); Lawrence B. Lindsey, the top economic adviser to George W. Bush, has put his stamp all over the candidate’s tax-cutting proposal. (Shana Raab for The New York Times); Advisers in the Bush presidential campaign include economists like Martin S. Feldstein, top (Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times), of the National Bureau of Economic Research; Michael J. Boskin, above left, of the Hoover Institution, and John F. Cogan, a budget aide to Ronald Reagan. (Jenny Thomas for The New York Times)(pg. 17)
Chart: “Sorting Out the Candidates” The leading presidential candidates in both parties are setting out positions on economic policy issues. There are big differences among the candidates as well as between the parties.
REPUBLICANS
GEORGE W. BUSH
BUDGET: Supports using the Social Security surplus to revamp the retirement system and using non-Social Security surplus mostly for tax cuts.
TAXES: Wants a $483 billion, five-year tax cut that would gradually reduce all income tax rates, double the child credit to $1,000, reduce the marriage penalty and phase out the tax on large estates.
SOCIAL SECURITY: Generally supports individual investment accounts within Social Security.
FEDERAL RESERVE: Advisers support reappointment of Alan Greenspan, the Fed chairman.
TRADE: Supports free trade and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.
JOHN McCAIN
BUDGET: Skeptical about projected surpluses. Advocates caution in using them to cut taxes. Would divide budget surplus among Social Security, tax relief, Medicare and some debt reduction.
TAXES: Would expand the lowest, 15 percent income tax bracket up to $70,000, to cover most middle-class taxpayers. Would reduce the marriage penalty and the estate tax.
SOCIAL SECURITY: Would use surpluses to help pay Social Security benefits and would create individual investment accounts within the system.
FEDERAL RESERVE: Strong supporter of Mr. Greenspan.
TRADE: Supports free trade and China’s entry into the W.T.O. if it meets the group’s standards.
STEVE FORBES
BUDGET: Would continue caps on spending and eliminate cabinet agencies to reduce government. Wants a constitutional amendment requiring a supermajority in Congress to raise taxes.
TAXES: Wants to replace the progressive income tax system with a 17 percent flat tax on all income above certain levels ($36,000 for a family of four); would eliminate capital gains and estate taxes.
SOCIAL SECURITY: Would create individual investment accounts within Social Security, financed out of payroll taxes. Would place no restrictions on retirement age.
FEDERAL RESERVE: Critical of Mr. Greenspan; suggests Jack Kemp as a possible replacement.
TRADE: Supports free trade. Says Taiwan should be brought into the W.T.O. before China.
DEMOCRATS
AL GORE
BUDGET: Supports using Social Security surplus to reduce the national debt; will avoid both big spending proposals and large tax cuts.
TAXES: Open to a modest tax cut, perhaps $250 billion to $300 billion over 10 years, for low- and moderate-income people or for specific purposes like reducing the marriage penalty or promoting education savings.
SOCIAL SECURITY: Would preserve current system perhaps with some investment of reserves in the stock market.
FEDERAL RESERVE: Strong supporter of Mr. Greenspan.
TRADE: Supports free trade, but needs votes from unions that oppose China’s entry into the W.T.O.
BILL BRADLEY
BUDGET: Wants to use budget surpluses to address big issues like making health care more accessible and reducing child poverty.
TAXES: Rules out a tax cut in a strong economy; declines to say that he would not raise taxes if revenues fell short of expectations.
SOCIAL SECURITY: Supports use of the surplus to bolster the system’s finances.
FEDERAL RESERVE: Is lukewarm on Mr. Greenspan.
TRADE: Supports free trade, China’s entry into the W.T.O. and labor and environmental standards in trade agreements. (pg. 17) |
