Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, February 27, 1993 TAG: 9302270083
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A-7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE SIMPSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
NEWSMAN WARNS CLINTON: CUT, THEN SPEND
Longtime NBC news correspondent Irving R. Levine says President Clinton's economic plan provides "tremendous change . . . . Parts of it are desirable; parts of it are undesirable."Levine, wearing a red bow-tie and sipping tea, leaned over the lectern at Roanoke College on Thursday as he spoke with students. Levine - the first national network correspondent to cover economics full-time - said that with a divided Democratic Party, Clinton should not spend tax money to help create new jobs to spur the economy.
"To gain credibility," he said, Clinton will have to cut the federal budget "before the additional stimulus [provided by] government spending."
Levine started covering economics for NBC in 1971. He spent 10 years in Rome, four years in Moscow, two years in Tokyo and a year in London before becoming chief economics correspondent based in Washington, D.C.
"Clinton's program as presented would decrease the deficit in 1997" from $290 billion to $260 billion, he said. At the rate it had been growing, the deficit would be $630 billion by 1997, he said.
To a question about Clinton's health care plan and the appointment of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton to head the committee studying health care, Levine replied: "We don't know what the plan is. As for the appointment, one can only applaud it. Whether you like it or not, no one questions her ability or the influence she has on the president."
Levine was optimistic about the economy. One of the things that kept the recession going was that people feared for their jobs, he said.
But "after the November election, there was an increase in consumer confidence." Levine said he didn't know whether to attribute that to Clinton or simply a change from the Bush administration.