Though Gov. Pete du Pont's plan was enacted while the economy was expanding, the actual cuts took place during a harsh recession.

By 1981, some made the familiar claim that a new economy would no longer be subject to harsh recessions; the worst recession since World War II began the next year.

Their once-predictable political order is undergoing unsettling change in the midst of a harsh recession.

Hit by a harsh recession after a series of tax-cutting measures pared the budget to the bone, Oregon, which has no statewide sales tax, now lacks enough money for health care, schools, prisons and criminal prosecution.

In 1983, a whole year after the last, longer and harsher recession ended, the rate was 9.6 percent, hardly different from the high point of 9.7 percent in 1982.

But despite a few years of rapid growth after the harsh 1982 recession, productivity growth on balance failed to improve and savings rates fell in the Reagan years.

New Jersey voters approved Atlantic City casinos in 1976, after a harsh recession, but its ambivalence showed in its strict regulation of the industry through the 1980's.

And if Mr. Burns triumphed, why did Mr. Volcker impose on this decade the harshest recession since the Depression?

Eventually, in early 1994, it became evident that he was in a cash squeeze, as Germany was enduring its harshest recession since the war.

The Terrace restaurant, high above 119th Street at Columbia University in Morningside Heights, seemed a likely victim for the harsh recent recession.