With the recent troubling decline in our economic growth rate, and larger budget surpluses nevertheless, Congress should accelerate the phase-in of Bush's proposed reduction in income tax rates and add components to his overall plan. The outlook for the current economic expansion is certainly grim. The rate of growth in our gross domestic product has dropped by more than 50 percent in just the last quarter to a languid four-year low of 2.2 percent. The Nasdaq is over 50 percent off its high. Corporate earnings are surprisingly low.
Oil prices remain high.
And with its recent interest-rate cuts, the Federal Reserve has dramatically acknowledged the substantial risk of a recession. Basic fairness requires eliminating the marriage penalty and the death tax as part of any tax relief package. But let's not kid ourselves. Even combined, they won't provide the stimulus this slowing economic expansion needs. Each time in the last century that tax rates were lowered, an economic boom followed.