The first speech by US President George W. Bush before the joint session of
the Congress saw the new President pitch his $1.6 trillion tax cut proposal with
a passionate "You've been overcharged and on your behalf, I'm here to ask
for a refund" statement to the American public. However, his proposal has
been greeted with a lot of skepticism by a divided Congress. The planned tax cut
will be cushioned by the projected $5.6 trillion surplus over the next decade
and the proposed cut in federal spending by 2 per cent. Incidentally, the tax
cut was the pivot around which the President had woven his electoral campaign.
Bush’s speech set the ball rolling in the direction of what he terms as the
first step towards achieving "fiscal sanity" in the budget. Apart from
the tax cut, the other priorities before the new government were clearly
education, Medicare, social security, health care, military pay, the
environment, his compassionate capital fund and an end to racial profiling. Over
the next one year the US government will increase its spending on social
security, Medicare and other entitlement programs by $81 billion.
The Democrats have dubbed Bush’s budget plans as too good to be true,
saying that a modest tax cut would have been more responsible. The next few days
will see the Bush opponents gathering forces to fight the cause of the
"working families", which they say, the White House had failed to
protect.