10 April 2001, 17:45 O'Neill says could support tax stimulus retroactive to 2000
WASHINGTON (AFX) - Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill said the Bush
administration could support making a portion of its proposed tax cut
retroactive to last year, in order to provide a short-term stimulus to
the economy.
"President (George W Bush) has said that we would look forward to
working with Congress to provide meaningful stimulus money this year,"
O'Neill said in an interview on CNN.
He added that "the most desirable notion" would be an early
introduction of Bush's proposed marginal income tax rate cuts, "made
retroactive to the beginning of this year, or maybe even to the
beginning of the year 2000."
While today's budget proposal by the administration did not include
an immediate tax cut stimulus, O'Neill repeated that the Bush team is
willing to work with Congress to determine how to "put some stimulus
out there right away."
He also repeated his recent assessments that the U.S. is not in a
recession, but rather a period of "low, moderate level of real growth."
When asked about last week's report that the U.S. lost 86,000
nonfarm payroll jobs in March, O'Neill said the current 4.3 pct
unemployment rate is still a "remarkable rate."
Noting the current U.S. corporate earnings season, he also said
"some of the early earnings numbers have been quite good."
O'Neill said recent rules implemented by the Security and Exchange
Commission that force companies to release the same information to
reporters as well as analysts could have had an impact on current
earnings.
Companies "are no longer having the quiet conversations with the
analysts' community. When it looks like there's going to be any change
in what was forecast, they (now) dump it into the market," he said.
"I think that's different from where we've been," he said,
concluding that "it's not clear to me that, in fact, the earnings are
different, but the process of announcing earnings seems to be different
because of the SEC (rules)."
© 1999-2024 Forex EuroClub
All rights reserved