Susan Jones at Cybercast News Service reports on Treasury Secretary John Snow’s comments this morning regarding the cost of the federal effort to rebuild New Orleans. Snow sounds awfully optimist, provides no cost figure and appears to have little concern about the burdensome debt he’s leaving on America’s youth. But he does get one thing right: No new taxes.
"With a strong economy we can face any challenge. Our government receipts...are running way ahead of expectations, which is why the deficit has been coming down. We'll go through a period where the deficit goes up some. It'll be a brief period, and then we'll get back on the path to cutting the deficit in half by 2009, which the president pledged to do.
"We'll meet that pledge," Snow said.
He said America can afford to boost the deficit "for a year or so," but it has to be done in a "fiscally responsible way."
Snow said a tax hike would be "the single worst thing we could do" while trying to encourage a recovery. Higher tax rates would "create fewer opportunities and hurt the very recovery process we're trying to encourage."
