Kernersville, N.C. – President Bush trumpeted recent sunny economic news Monday and said his tax cuts were responsible for rapid growth and new jobs.
Speaking to 600 workers at a Deere-Hitachi manufacturing plant, Bush credited his first-term tax cuts and other policies with helping the U.S. economy grow by 4.3 percent from July to September and adding 215,000 jobs last month.
“We lowered your taxes and gave you the opportunity to keep more of what you earned and let you decide how best to spend your own money,” he said. “We cut the taxes on families by lowering the tax rates and by doubling the child credit and reducing the marriage penalty. … These cuts are making a real difference to American families.”
Bush called opponents of tax cuts – particularly Democrats – pessimists. In a speech that echoed themes from his presidential campaigns, he renewed his call to make tax reductions permanent and urged Congress to revamp the Social Security and health-care systems.
The speech, which came as the president’s approval numbers are at historic lows over the war in Iraq and the economy, was part of a White House offensive to gain support for his domestic agenda before he slides into irretrievable lame-duck status.
The sales pitch faces a skeptical national audience. Sixty-two percent of U.S. adults disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy, while 31 percent approve, according to a survey late last month by the American Research Group. Its error margin is 2.6 percentage points.
Personal experience fuels such pessimism. While the economy grew by a healthy 4.2 percent in 2004, most families lost income; real median household income fell for the fifth year in a row, census data show.
In addition, people remain pinched by high gasoline prices, even though they’ve come down considerably from post-Katrina peaks, and haunted by news of mass layoffs at giant companies such as General Motors, which announced recently that it will cut 30,000 jobs by 2008.
Bush drew the loudest applause when he warned U.S. corporations not to mess with their retirees’ pensions.
He proposed a plan to revise pension rules and give companies with underfunded pension plans seven years to make them whole.
“And so my message to corporate America is, you need to fulfill your promises,” he said. “When you say to a worker this is what they’re going to get when they retire, you better put enough money in the account to make sure the worker gets that which you said.”
