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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (339740)	1/7/2003 5:17:26 PM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Bush Presses Congress on Tax-Cutting Plan 59 minutes ago URL:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=544&ncid=716&e=1&u=/ap/20030107/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush Bush Presses Congress on Tax-Cutting Plan 59 minutes ago By RON FOURNIER, AP White House Correspondent CHICAGO - President Bush (news - web sites) asked Congress on Tuesday to "push the economy forward" with a $674 billion plan to abolish federal taxes on stock dividends, speed up promised income tax cuts and send rebate checks to 34 million low- and middle-income parents. AP Photo Reuters Slideshow: President Bush Bush Unveils $674 Billion Stimulus Plan (AP Video) Democrats said the lion's share of the package favors the rich, a claim the White House did not dispute. "This growth and jobs package is essential in the short run," Bush said in an address to the Economic Club of Chicago. "It's an immediate boost to the economy. And these proposals will help stimulate investment and put more people back to work." The 10-year package, all but $4 billion of it for cutting taxes, goes to Congress as the federal government grapples with rising budget deficits. "He has put forward an irresponsible, ineffective, ideologically driven wish list," said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (news, bio, voting record), D-Conn., who is likely to seek the Democratic presidential nomination. The president and his allies counter that the package will spur consumer and business spending, expanding the economy and helping the government's budget figures. Bush outlined his economic plan three weeks before his State of the Union address, which is expected to focus on terrorism and the potential war in Iraq. Tax cuts are the centerpiece of his domestic policy agenda, but Bush also is laying plans to overhaul the Medicare and Social Security (news - web sites) systems. The economic package's first-year cost of $102 billion would equal about 0.01 percent of the country's $10 trillion annual gross domestic product. That is within the range of what most economists say is needed to stimulate the economy, though they differ on whether tax cuts or government spending should dominate the package. Part of the reason for the high price tag is that Bush sought to touch all his political bases — from the conservatives who are calling for across-the-board tax cuts to the broader range of middle-class voters who tend to sway presidential elections and to important constituencies such as senior citizens and small business owners. In the final weeks of an intense internal debate, Bush cast aside the advice of his more cautious aides and offered a package twice the size that Congress was told to expect. He decided to ask lawmakers to eliminate taxes on stock dividends, not just cut them, and to include the highest income rate in his tax-cutting plan. Some presidential advisers feared cutting taxes to the wealthiest Americans would pose a political problem. Bush settled on a strategy to confront the criticism head on. "The president does not believe in punishing people because they are successful," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web sites) said aboard Air Force One en route to the address. "The president does not believe in getting into class warfare." That's just what Democrats accused him of doing. "He's speaking the rhetoric working Americans are so eager to hear, but offering only words to distract from his big, new tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans," said Sen. John Kerry (news, bio, voting record) of Massachusetts, another Democratic presidential hopeful. Both Kerry and Lieberman have offered their own economic plans, as have other Democratic lawmakers. Those plans tend to be much smaller than Bush's, and more focused on middle-class Americans. By opting for the biggest and priciest of options presented by advisers, Bush has given himself negotiating room in a Congress that his party barely controls, aides said. They say Bush also calculated that an audacious plan would show voters he is serious about tackling the ailing economy. He learned from his father, they said, that a weak economy can undermine a president's popularity, and that political capital must be spent before it evaporates. "We will not rest until every business has a chance to grow and every person who wants to find work can find a job," Bush said. This is Bush's second attempt to jump-start the economy; the first stimulus package came after the Sept. 11 attacks. He said the economy is sound, but a 6 percent unemployment rate is too high. By far the most expensive item is eliminating taxes on stock dividends paid to shareholders. Bush is counting on wide appeal from the growing number of Americans who invest in the stock market. The president said almost half of the savings would go to taxpayers 65 or older. Democrats and many independent economists say most of those elderly citizens are wealthy. Bush also wants to make rate reductions from the 2001 tax law effective this year and retroactive to Jan. 1. Currently, those cuts don't take place until 2004 and 2006. But many Democrats didn't like the budget damage from the tax cuts in 2001, and conservatives may wonder why other 2001 tax law initiatives won't be extended under Bush's plan, such as easing the tax on estates. Promising tax relief for the middle class, Bush proposed to speed up provisions in the 2001 law that increased child tax credits, reduced the tax penalty paid by some married couples and expanded the creation of a 10 percent tax bracket. Those items make up less than a third of the overall plan's price tag. The maximum child tax credit would increase from $600 to $1,000 per child, with the difference sent to taxpayers in the form of a rebate. Eligibility is based on income, with the program phased out after a $100,000 annual salary. In addition to supporting an extension in unemployment benefits, Bush asked Congress to send $4 billion to states and create "re-employment accounts." People who have exhausted their unemployment benefits or are likely to do so can receive up to $3,000 to pay the expenses incurred in finding a job. The plan offers few direct business breaks, though small companies would be able to write off more equipment expenses.

To: J_F_Shepard who wrote (339740)	1/8/2003 12:33:20 PM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

The recession was over in March of '91, and the North Vietnamese admitted that they had suckered Clinton and continued to pursue their nuclear program all along. He benefited from the end of the Cold War; waited until the factions in Bosnia had practically achieved their objectives, only to insert "peacekeepers" to preserve the ethnically cleansed enclaves; practically precipitated the second Intifada by leaning on the Israelis to make concessions, which emboldened the Palestinians to agitate for more; and failed to deal adequately with terrorism, despite the warning of the first attack on the World Trade Center. Meanwhile, the major cities, and most states, were run by Republicans, which had a lot to do with the crime rate, not to mention the Republican Congress, which introduced welfare reform, kept the military from falling apart, and forced spending restraint to pursue the goal of deficit reduction. Nevertheless, Clinton left with the stock- market in free- fall, and the beginnings of a recession; with an economic record not markedly better than Reagan's, even though Reagan had to deal with a recession; with the revelation that many corporations cooked the books during the '90s; and with a terrorist organization having, for a couple of years, been freely working towards the attacks of 9-11, emboldened, very likely, by Clinton's relative lack of vigor in responding to earlier outrages. Clinton was not all bad, as long as he stuck to Republican planks, like the ratification of GATT and NAFTA. And there may be debates about lines of causality and presidential responsibility. But it is no good to misrepresent the actual record.......