Alan Greenspan gave a short summary on the Economic Outlook before the House Budget Committee today. He repeated his support for reinstating the Budget Enforcement Act.

In case you don't quite recall, the Budget Enforcement Act was first passed by Bush I, extended during the Clinton administration, but allowed to expire under Bush II. The Act put in place restrictions on the growth rate of discretionary federal spending, and instituted pay-as-you-go rules for tax cuts and new entitlement spending. A nice overview of the BEA can be found here.

There's not really too much else of interest in the Chairman's comments, although he did have this to say about the impact of oil prices on the economy:

Evaluating the impact of rising oil prices on economic activity in the United States has long been a subject of dispute among economists. Most macroeconomic models treat an increase in oil prices as a tax on U.S. residents that saps the purchasing power of households and raises costs for businesses. But economists disagree about the size of the effects, in part because of differences in the key assumptions employed in the statistical models that underlie the analyses. Moreover, the models are typically based on average historical experience, which is dominated by periods of only moderate fluctuations in oil prices and thus may not adequately capture the adverse effects on the economy of oil price spikes. In addition to the difficulties of measuring the impact of oil prices on economic growth, the oil price outlook itself is uncertain.

I'd say "subject of dispute" is a pretty good description. Here in Cleveland, we're actually working on an informal summary of research on energy price shocks and the economy. I'll let you know when it's ready.