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Steve Clemons of the New America Foundation, one of several Middle East experts who met with Obama and his advisers on Monday, said the president and his ...

“You can only tax `rich people' so many times before you run out revenue, “ said Maya MacGuineas of the Committee. “Once you do the surtax, that's it. ...

[KEITH] OLBERMANN [HOST]: For more on what the president said about Iran particularly in Wednesday`s speech, and what he may have really meant, let us turn now to former CIA and Bush administration National Security Counsel senior official, Flynt Leverett. Thank you for your time tonight, sir.

FLYNT LEVERETT, FORMER BUSH NSC OFFICIAL: Thanks for having me.

OLBERMANN: Are we to conclude from the president`s speech Wednesday evening that the real escalation of this war may not be troop deployment in Iraq, but a wider conflict involving Iran?

This is the Golden Age of the self-made CEO. Michael Bloomberg, an up-from-the-bootstraps media mogul, was just elected mayor of New York City. Jack Welch, the General Electric CEO who trumpeted his working class origins even as climbed to the heights of power and influence, is a best-selling author. The business media loves stories of men and women who worked their way up from the proverbial mailroom to the corner office. Having broken free of the strictures imposed by birth, education, gender and class, they have thrived in the most competitive environments imaginable.

Congress and President Bush have taken swift and correct action to pass a $15 billion package of loan guarantees and cash grants for the beleaguered aviation industry. Yet politicians on both sides of the aisle rightly proclaimed that a bailout should not be a means of bailing out highly-paid CEOs from the workings of the market. Labor leaders criticized the bailout for not offering extra funds to help the tens of thousands of workers who may lose jobs and benefits.

Earlier this year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the fiscal 2001 surplus, including the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, would come in at a stunning $280 billion. But last week, reacting to the stagnant economy and the newly enacted tax rebates, the CBO sharply revised that figure down to a not-as-impressive $153 billion. This move suggested that the government would have to draw down about $9 billion of the Social Security surplus to fund this year's operations.

As the orgy of media coverage subsides over President Bush's first 100 days in office, debate will focus anew on the competing tax and spending plans. Both Democrats and Republicans are basing their grand fiscal plans on estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) that the tireless U.S. economy will produce a $5.6 trillion government surplus between fiscal years 2002 and 2011.