Bush Calls For Tax Relief To Be Made Permanent

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

13 January 2004

President Bush is to urge Congress to make last year’s tax relief package permanent, warning the American public that failure to do so may result in tax increases from next year.

"In my budget for the upcoming fiscal year, I will call on Congress to make permanent all the tax relief we have delivered to the American people and our nation's small businesses," Bush said in his weekly radio address last Saturday.

"If Congress fails to act, this tax relief will disappear and millions of American families and small businesses would see tax hikes starting in 2005," he warned, adding: "For the sake of our economic expansion, and for the sake of millions of Americans who depend on small businesses for their jobs, we need Congress to act to make tax relief permanent."

The President’s plea comes on the back of disappointing employment figures and echoes similar calls from within the adminstration, most notably by Treasury Secretary John Snow.

In the transcript of a speech to the American Chamber of Commerce last week, Snow warned that “failure to make the tax relief permanent would be a huge mistake and would put our recovery in jeopardy.”

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