High-Tech Industry to Bush Economic Team: Stay the Course on Tax Cuts, Economic Security!

Raleigh, NC - Employees and employers in North Carolina's Research Triangle today urged Commerce Secretary Don Evans and other key members of President Bush's Economic Team to "stay the course" in its continued fight for tax cuts and economic security.

"America's working families and job-creators are speaking up loudly and clearly: 'preserve our tax cuts, and help us grow this economy and create jobs with a stimulus package,'" Evans said.

The high-tech industry's views on economic security were voiced at an "America Works" town hall meeting today in Raleigh, N.C., with Evans, U.S. Small Business Administrator Hector Barreto, Chairman of the President's Council of Economic Advisors Glenn Hubbard, and Chairman of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology Floyd Kvamme. The "America Works" session was the third in a series of economic roundtable discussions hosted by the Bush Economic Team around the country.

"The President has been leading on economic security since Day One. Last spring, he won strong bipartisan support in Congress for tax cuts. After September 11th, he proposed a plan to help workers who have lost their jobs and to stimulate growth in the economy so they can replace unemployment checks with paychecks," Evans said. A bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives passed the economic security plan before the winter holidays, but the Senate has not acted.

In a speech today at Washington's National Press Club, U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy proposed putting a stop to the tax cuts enacted last spring. Kennedy's speech came on the heels of a controversial speech last week by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who was widely criticized by economists and lawmakers from both major political parties for suggesting the tax cuts passed last spring have worsened the current economic slowdown.

"I don't know what economic text book they are reading, but the way to growth is tax cuts. Tax cuts are the real stimulus," Evans said. "That's what I hear consistently from workers, entrepreneurs and business across the country."