General Discussion

The Bush idea was (I remember Jeb used to say this) that, "Look, you hit them in every single hat they wear." That was the idea. He used to call them fodder. You hit the fodder in their hats as Taxpayers. You hit them in their hats as Investors and Savers. You hit them in their hats as Insurance Policy Owners through all these insurance scams his brother was involved in. Then there was, of course, Jeb's International Medical Corporation. Jeb also liked health care scams. But that was the idea the Bushes had, that you take the American taxpayer (which they called "One Fodder Unit," or OFU) and you hit them in every single hat they wear.

I don't know where the term came from, but "One Fodder Unit" became a popular term on the Republican cocktail party circuit in 1985. According to them, each individual American citizen equals One Fodder Unit.

Today we have the results of that. When George Bush left office, the federal budget deficit was actually twice what they claimed it was. They were able to hide about half of the federal budget deficit through the Bush Regime. Then Clinton came in, and he had a pretty good idea of what the problems were up front. That's one reason why he kept Alan Greenspan, by the way. It was because the marketplaces both here and abroad had a lot of faith in Greenspan. He told Greenspan early on that we're going to have to bring interest rates down and flood the market with money, which was done in '93. Interest rates fell precipitously, and then there was the sharp spike in '94. This was necessary to bleed some of the problems out of the economy.