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Politics : WHO IS RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IN 2004 -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: calgal who wrote (1835)	4/27/2003 12:11:04 AM
From: calgal	Respond to of 10965

President Pushes for Full Tax Cut in Radio Address Saturday, April 26, 2003 WASHINGTON — President Bush, focusing increasingly on his domestic agenda, turned up the pressure Saturday on lawmakers of his own party who are resisting his demand for half a trillion dollars in new tax cuts. Bush (search) derided members of Congress who, although a part of the Republican majority that supports fresh tax relief, are refusing to accept the amount the president says is necessary to revive the economy. "Since they already agree that tax relief creates jobs, it doesn't make sense to provide less tax relief and, therefore, create fewer jobs," Bush said in his weekly radio address. "I believe we should enact more tax relief, so that we can create more jobs and more Americans can find work and provide for their families." Bush eschewed his usual weekend stay at Camp David in nearby Maryland to attend Saturday night's annual White House Correspondents' Association (search) dinner in Washington. The president spoke by telephone on Saturday with Chinese President Hu Jintao (search), discussing negotiations with North Korea regarding its nuclear weapons programs and the outbreak of the deadly SARS respiratory disease centered in China. He thanked Hu for the Chinese government's "full and active participation" in the North Korea talks, White House spokeswoman Mercedes Viana said. Bush also offered U.S. assistance to China in dealing with SARS, she said. There were several signs that, despite the lack of an official declaration and the continuing presence of over 100,000 American troops in Iraq, the war there is all but over. The White House restored its normal practice of publicizing Bush's calendar for the coming week, which was suspended with the start of Persian Gulf hostilities. Next week's schedule includes many more appearances and travel plans than have been seen for weeks, with most events focused on nonwar matters. Next week, Bush plans to speak in the Rose Garden on his AIDS overseas spending initiative, preside over an official ceremony to sign far-reaching children's protection legislation, confer the national teacher of the year award and deliver an economic address on Friday in Santa Clara, Calif. He also travels Monday to Dearborn, Mich., to talk about Iraq's future and is spending Thursday night on a homeward-bound aircraft carrier. Next weekend, Australian Prime Minister John Howard joins Bush for a visit at Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas. In addition, Iraq was not the subject of Bush's weekly radio address for the first time since February, moved aside by the coming congressional battle on the size of tax cuts. Lawmakers significantly scaled back the president's original proposal for $726 billion in tax cuts over 10 years. The House capped new tax relief at $550 billion, and the Senate said it should be no greater than $350 billion. Two Republican senators were opposed to any new cuts, and two others adamantly rejected any above $350 billion. That political reality has led the White House to scale back its expectations, saying at least $550 billion is now the president's goal. The situation also has led to White House efforts to bring recalcitrant Republicans in line. Last week, Bush took his tax-slashing message to the home state of GOP Sen. George Voinovich of Ohio, who has insisted that new cuts be limited to $350 billion. In Saturday's his radio address, Bush repeated the plea for new tax cuts he said he heard from a Youngstown, Ohio, businessman. Despite polls that show public skepticism about the need for new tax cuts, Bush also suggested some lawmakers are out of touch with the mood of the country. "Americans understand the need for action," he said. But Democrats, who argue Bush's proposal mainly would help the rich and not the economy, have kept up the pressure as well. Delivering the Democrats' weekly radio address, Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones said larger investment write-offs for businesses and bigger reimbursements for health care providers would work more economic magic than Bush's proposed elimination of dividend taxes and acceleration of already planned reductions in income tax rates. "For the last two weeks, President Bush and his advisers have traveled the country, including a visit to my home state, trying to sell their massive tax cut to the American people. They are wrapping it in fancy paper and calling it a `stimulus package' or an `economic plan,"' Jones said. "They can dress up this tax cut any way they want, and it's still just that -- a tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans that does nothing to create jobs and will only sink our nation further into debt," Jones said. URL:http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,85241,00.html

To: calgal who wrote (1835)	4/27/2003 12:31:34 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 10965

Bush believes Saddam destroyed arms By Joseph Curl THE WASHINGTON TIMES URL:http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20030426-333004.htm The White House said yesterday that Saddam Hussein may have ordered the destruction of some chemical and biological weapons on the eve of the war and suggested that the swift military invasion could have prevented the Iraqi dictator from using what remained of his arsenal. A day after President Bush said U.S. air strikes early in the war may have killed or severely wounded Saddam, preventing him from using mass destruction weapons or effectively commanding his troops, his spokesman yesterday said there is evidence some weapons may have been destroyed. "The president says that we have evidence now that we are gathering that shows that they may have destroyed some of them on the eve of the war," Ari Fleischer said. "And just because it happened on the eve of the war, that proves what the president is saying about in the months leading up to the war, that the real cause of insecurity and the threat that Iraq presented was that they had weapons of mass destruction." The spokesman would not divulge the evidence or reveal what intelligence led the president to assert that some weapons may have been destroyed. "We can't explain why they may have destroyed some of them. Perhaps over time we will find out what drove them to do that. Perhaps it was the fear of actually being discovered, caught red-handed with the very weapons we said they had," Mr. Fleischer said. Meanwhile, the White House announced that Mr. Bush will travel on Thursday to San Diego and greet U.S. Marines and sailors returning from the conflict aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier. A senior administration official said the president may deliver a speech on board the carrier that includes "an element of closure" about the war in Iraq. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, cautioned that Mr. Bush must first hear the latest status of the war from allied commander Army Gen. Tommy Franks before deciding when to announce the end of the conflict. The White House said coalition forces in Iraq have searched about 90 sites suspected of producing or holding mass destruction weapons but so far they have found nothing. "There are hundreds more to go," Mr. Fleischer said, "and as the president made clear again, as we continue to talk to the people who have come into our hands, we continue to gather more evidence, more information that we will act upon." Mr. Bush on Thursday said there is "some evidence" that U.S. air strikes on the first night of the war in Iraq may have killed or severely wounded Saddam, which would explain why the dictator did not destroy oil wells and dams and why the Iraqi defense of Baghdad was so ineffective and disjointed. "The people that wonder if Saddam Hussein is dead or not, there's some evidence that says, suggests he might be," Mr. Bush told NBC's Tom Brokaw. "We would never make that declaration until we were more certain. But the person that helped direct the attacks believes that Saddam, at the very minimum, was severely wounded." The president said, "we know he had a weapons of mass destruction program," adding that because of the U.S.-led invasion, "we now know he's not going to use them." Still, he said, "we will find them. But it's going to take time to find them." Mr. Fleischer said the evidence that Saddam may have destroyed mass destruction weapons validates U.S. concerns about the threat posed by the regime. "It actually proves the case, when you think about it, that if Iraq did, indeed, destroy some of them on the eve of war, they had them, they lied to the United Nations about them, they lied to the world about them, they lied to the United States about them, and they fooled the inspectors when it came to having them," Mr. Fleischer said. "How could they have destroyed them if they didn't have them?" The spokesman said one explanation for why Saddam and other regime officials didn't use mass destruction weapons or destroy Iraq's infrastructure "may be the successful military campaign that was carried out that prevented them from doing many of the worse-case scenarios that we feared they'd do." "We're fortunate if they destroyed it, because that means they didn't use it. They certainly could have made a very different decision because they did have it. It could have been used," he said. "Mercifully, it was not," Mr. Fleischer said. In the president's wide-ranging interview with the NBC news anchor — his first since the war began March 19 — Mr. Bush said looting and vandalism in Baghdad, particularly in hospitals and museums, was "the absolute worst part" of an otherwise successful military campaign. "It's like uncorking a bottle of frustration," he said.

To: calgal who wrote (1835)	4/27/2003 11:05:24 AM
From: calgal	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10965

April 27, 2003 Fingers crossed, prosperity prognosticated Alan Reynolds The president surprised us all by casually announcing that he intended to reappoint Alan Greenspan as chairman of the Federal Reserve. A few Bush loyalists had wanted to replace Mr. Greenspan simply because he was unsupportive of the president's efforts to speed-up tax cuts scheduled for 2004-2006. But why should we expect any official in charge of monetary policy to give sound advice about tax policy? We don't expect the secretary of the Treasury to dictate what the Fed should do with interest rates, and we should not expect the Fed chairman to dictate what the Treasury should do about taxes. Those tasks are prudently separated, partly to avoid conflict of interest. Central bankers have always and everywhere tried to blame every conceivable economic problem on insufficient tax revenue, thereby attributing no problems to monetary mismanagement. Mr. Greenspan, for example, somehow imagines that budget deficits cause current account deficits ("twin deficits") and these terribly high interest rates we are suffering from today. In the early 1930s, other Fed officials blamed the Depression on the budget deficit. From the late 1960s to the early '80s, Fed officials blamed inflation on the budget deficit. In the Fed's spin book, fiscal policy naturally gets the blame when things go badly and monetary policy gets the credit when things go well. This fine art of fiscal scapegoating is a job prerequisite for any central banker. Perhaps that explains why confusion invariably arises whenever Congress asks the Fed chairman for fiscal policy advice. Tax policy is not Mr. Greenspan's job, after all, and he is not good at it. In particular, he always wants to postpone tax cuts as long as possible. And that advice contributed to two episodes of notoriously bad timing. In early 1981, supply-siders on the transition team (myself, Larry Kudlow, Craig Roberts and John Rutledge) wanted to cut marginal tax rates right away, taking the top rate down to 35-40 percent. But Mr. Greenspan successfully advised postponing nearly all of the tax reduction until 1983-84, and he also recommended keeping the top tax rate at 50 percent. In 2001, supply-siders again urged that the planned reduction of marginal rates take place right away, retroactive to the start of that year. But Mr. Greenspan once again successfully advised taking six years to reduce tax rates by about 3 percentage points. He even recommended a "trigger" that would automatically repeal tax cuts if Congress spent too much, which would have provided an irresistible incentive for pro-tax legislators to do just that. Gradualist timing was a big mistake in both 1981 and 2001. The recession of 1981-82 could surely have been alleviated if the reduction of tax rates had not been phased-in so slowly. And recovery from the recession of 2001 would likewise have been strengthened if the reduction of tax rates had not been phased-in so slowly. Indeed, much of the president's new tax plan consists of repairing the latest phase-in blunder. Phasing-in any reduction in tax rates is always a bad idea. Tax cuts put off until the distant future usually have little credibility. Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt of Missouri has already come out for repealing all tax cuts enacted in 2001. Since taxpayers cannot count on tax cuts promised for future years, that means phased-in tax reductions lose any beneficial effect on expectations and investment plans today. On the other hand, if people do believe tax rates will be lower in the future, that provides a perverse incentive to delay doing whatever it is that is going to be taxed at a lower rate later. If some state legislature were to announce that sales taxes would be cut two years from now, for example, everyone would wait until then to make any major purchases. The message Congress sends with phased-in reductions in income tax rates is that it makes sense to postpone doing things that would increase income right away. Delaying receipts of taxable income (and accelerating deductions) is not difficult for many small businesses, professionals and retired people. The device of phasing-in would be particularly inappropriate if it were to be applied to taxation of investment income, since the timing and form of such income is easy to change. Yet talk has nonetheless begun about phasing-in over 10 years the reduction or elimination of individual taxes on dividends. News sources claim this newest phase-in blunder has support from the White House. But public rumors of that sort are often trial balloons launched by various factions. The message Congress would send with phased-in reductions of dividend taxes would be that it makes sense to postpone investing in securities that pay dividends until later when dividends would be taxed at a lower rate. The message would also be that it makes sense for corporations to postpone paying generous dividends. Phased-in tax reductions, in short, provide precisely the wrong incentives. Whether for investment income or labor income, phasing-in lower tax rates is a case of bad bookkeeping taking precedence over good economics. Because of the ritual congressional foolishness of trying to budget over 10-year spans, delay appears to reduce the accumulated 10-year "cost" of tax cuts. In reality, phasing-in lower tax rates has zero effect on the long-term budget outlook. Phasing-in just gets us to the same point a few years too late. When it comes to lower tax rates, later is never better than sooner. I have no idea whether or not Mr. Greenspan's past propensity to delay any and all tax relief might also apply to dividend tax relief, which he apparently favors. If he ever did endorse phasing-in a lower tax on dividends, however, his past record on phasing-in other tax cuts offers ample warning about the dangers of following such advice. By all means, let Mr. Greenspan keep doing what he does best — managing the Fed. But if Congress is looking for serious advice on tax policy, the record suggests it would be much safer to ask the secretary of the Treasury, the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, the director of the Congressional Budget Office or just about any name randomly selected from any telephone book. Alan Reynolds is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a nationally syndicated columnist. URL:http://www.washingtontimes.com/commentary/20030427-1097964.htm