BEN BETTER THAN ALAN

Alan Greenspan was a partisan hack when it came to Pres. Fredo's voodoo tax cuts but Ben Bernanke seems to be less wrapped up in ideological commitments. Ben basically says "NO" to extending the tax cuts for the top 1% as a way to avoid or reduce a recession.

From his prepared remarks to the Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives
January 17, 2008:

To be useful, a fiscal stimulus package should be implemented qickly and structured so that its effects on aggregate spending are felt as much as possible within the next twelve months or so. Stimulus that comes too late
will not help support economic activity in the near term, and it could be actively destabilizing if it comes at a time when growth is already improving. Thus, fiscal measures that involve long lead times or result in additional economic activity only over a protracted period, whatever their intrinsic merits might be, will not provide stimulus when it is most needed. Any fiscal package should also be efficient, in the sense of maximizing the amount of near-term stimulus per dollar of increased federal expenditure or lost revenue. Finally, any program should be explicitly temporary, both to avoid unwanted stimulus beyond the near-term horizon and, importantly, to preclude an increase in the federal government's structural budget deficit. As I have discussed on other occasions, the nation faces daunting long-run budget challenges associated with an aging population, rising health-care costs, and other factors. A fiscal program that increased the structural budget deficit would only make confronting those challenges more difficult.