Snow Pushes Tax Cut, Growth in Interview

Treasury Secretary John Snow said in a televised interview on cable business news channel CNBC that President Bush's package of proposed tax cuts is "the right medicine for the economy."

Snow said that he believes the president’s plan, which calls for more than $700 billion in tax cuts, will ensure economic growth and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

There has been some debate in Congress, with the House and Senate voting Wednesday to agree to disagree on the size of the tax cut, Reuters reported. The Senate has backed a $326 billion cut while the House supports a $626 billion reduction in taxes.

“We want the biggest tax relief plan for the American people that we can find,” Snow told CNBC.

Snow also said that he would like to see the world’s economic leaders agree to a compact on growth, believing that economies around the world are not growing fast enough. If economies around the world start growing faster, Snow told CNBC, then demand for U.S. goods will increase and exports will increase.

The end of the war in Iraq may benefit the economy “because some geopolitical uncertainty has been resolved,” Snow told CNBC, but that much of the benefit may already have been seen.

Snow said that the decline in oil prices since the start of the war has helped, and will continue to help the economy because consumers and businesses will have more money to spend on non-fuel goods.

Despite this boost from the end of the war and the decline in oil prices, Snow still said that the economy needs the stimulation from the tax cut package.