Federal Reserve Chair Urges Congress to Reduce National Debt.(Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News)

Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News, January, 2000 by Hill, Patrice

Jan. 27--Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said yesterday that Congress should resist a spending splurge and use the burgeoning federal surpluses primarily to reduce the $5.7 trillion national debt.

To fashion a more credible budget policy, Congress should stop using sleight of hand to evade the spending caps it enacted in 1997 or raise those caps, if necessary, to more realistic levels, he said at a renomination hearing before the Senate banking committee.

"The central bank ... is interested in as much fiscal restraint as can conceivably occur," he said. "Greater fiscal restraint usually ... makes it easier" for the Fed to do its job, he said, suggesting that the central bank takes the strin-gency of budget policies into account when deciding...

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