US Presidency
1964

For until the bill is signed, its investment incentives can not be deemed certain, and the withholding rate can not be reduced, and the most damaging and devastating thing you can do to any businessman in America is to keep him in doubt and to keep him guessing on what our tax policy is. And I say that we should now reduce to 14 percent instead of 15 percent our withholding rate. I therefore urge the Congress to take final action on this bill by the first of February, if at all possible. For however proud we may be of the unprecedented progress of our free enterprise economy over the last three years, we should not and we can not permit it to pause. In 1963, for the first time in history, we crossed the 70-million job mark, but we will soon need more than 75 million jobs. In 1963 our gross national product reached the $ 600 billion level, $ 100 billion higher than when we took office.