1.   If that is the new strategy, health care must wait for settlement of the most contentious issues on the national agenda, taxes, and spending reductions.

2.   And by the time the GOP spending reduction plan winds its way completely through Congress, even those potential savings may have dried up.

3.   And it is tightly linked with spending reductions, something that never happened in the Reagan years.

4.   And they will be spared the pain of voting for the additional spending reductions necessary to offset them.

5.   Anything much bigger, economists said Friday, would trigger doubts that either party could pay for the tax cuts they are championing with equivalent spending reductions.

6.   As a practical matter, the budget law requires all tax cuts to be offset by increases in other taxes or spending reductions.

7.   At the same time, spending reductions have cut teaching staff, leaving lecture halls bulging with students who say they sometimes wait for years to meet with professors.

8.   At the same time, though, he wants to take money OUT of the economy by demanding more federal spending reductions, including an across-the-board budget cut.

9.   Alan Greenspan assured Republicans in Congress that he would try to protect the economy from any damage that might be caused by their proposed spending reductions.

10.   All the politicians who support tax cuts insist that they will be offset by spending reductions, but they have not said exactly how they would accomplish that.