(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-09-20 06:08

WASHINGTON - US President George W. Bush has defended his administration's fiscal record and said he " respectfully" disagrees with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's recent criticism, U.S. media reported on Wednesday.

"Our fiscal record is admirable and good. After all, the deficit as a percentage of GDP is low relative to the 30-year average," Bush said in an interview with the Fox News Channel, which was aired on Tuesday and Wednesday.

"I would respectfully disagree with the characterizations of Chairman Greenspan," Bush said.

In a memoir released this week, Greenspan attacked President Bush and Republican lawmakers over an explosion of federal spending.

"My basic problem is with the Republican Congress. My problem with the president is that he did not use the veto sufficiently," Greenspan also repeated the criticism in an interview with the Fox recently.

In an op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Vice President Cheney,a colleague of Greenspan's in the Ford administration, also spoke out on Greenspan's critique. Cheney said his friend was a great Fed chairman, but his assessment of Bush economic policies "is off the mark."

"The fact is that in a time of unprecedented challenge, the United States has experienced nearly six years of uninterrupted economic growth and added more than eight million new jobs since August 2003 -- more than all other major industrialized nations combined," Cheney wrote.