Quotes by Robert Greenstein

“We need to figure out how to help more lower- and middle-income people save for retirement, ... not lose large amounts of money by giving people breaks at high-income levels, who already have substantial assets to fall back on.”

“If youre young and healthy, this can work well. If youre not young and healthy, it can be a disaster, and you can end up much worse off than you currently are.”

“There is this double standard. The losses are larger in other areas of the tax code, but somehow a different standard gets applied to this.”

“So theres actually big differences for low- and moderate-income families -- better under Gore. Big differences for very high-income families -- they get a lot more under Bush.”

“Weve had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks. Weve gone from a situation in which we might have a long-overdue debate on deep poverty to the possibility, perhaps even the likelihood, that low-income people will be asked to bear the costs. I would find it unimaginable if it wasnt actually happening.”

“Weve had a stunning reversal in just a few weeks,”

“My worry is that in the absence of discipline, what we will see a month from now after the initial relief bills are passed, are efforts by policy-makers of both parties and a variety of interest groups to take advantage of the disaster by arguing that all sorts of expansions in tax cuts and certain spending ... are needed,”

“The plans are quite different. Theyre different in how much of the surplus they would use. Theyre different in where those surplus dollars would go. Theyre different in which groups of the population would get the principal benefits.”

“The new data are particularly troubling for working people, showing backward movement for most workers. In short, the census data provide new evidence that, as in 2002 and 2003, the recovery was neither robust nor broad-based.”

“Its effectively cheating low-income families.”