Greenspan: "Unsustainable Path" - Asks for Triggers that would Block New Tax Cuts.

Alan Greenspan, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, urged lawmakers on Thursday to scale back promised benefits for both Social Security and Medicare "sooner rather than later."
Expressing particular alarm about health costs and Medicare, Mr. Greenspan warned that the federal budget was on an "unsustainable path" that would lead to a vicious circle of higher deficits, higher interest rates and even higher borrowing.
"Unless that trend is reversed, at some point these deficits could cause the economy to stagnate or worse," the Fed chairman told the Senate Budget Committee.
...Mr. Greenspan admitted that he and most other forecasters had been wrong to expect budget surpluses, which disappeared the next year.
But he said it was unfair to accuse him of complicity in the deficits, because he had also pleaded unsuccessfully for "triggers," or mechanisms that would require policy changes if expected tax revenues failed to materialize.