What's The Difference?

The boom would keep bubbling under either Gore's or Bush's program, say TIME's economists, even if neither one is ideal

The numbers sound gigantic, awesome, mind boggling. Match them up against the stunning dimensions of the U.S. economy, though, and the figures the Al Gore and George W. Bush campaigns brandish on the stump suddenly shrink to a kind of marginal gloss. That was one of the first and most often made observations by TIME's Board of Economists when asked to weigh the presidential candidates' competing programs in the national balance. David Wyss, the nonpartisan chief economist of Standard & Poor, prices Bush's and Gore's tax and spending plans at around $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. That sounds like...

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