President Bush essays

President Bush essays With an Iraq invasion likely by early next year, the President has a small window to weigh measures aimed at jump-starting the sputtering expansion. And Corporate America hopes he seizes the moment. "Now is the time to step on the gas," says Pfizer Inc. CEO Henry A. McKinnell. "It's time to start talking seriously about a stimulus package." Revving the nation's economic engine represents more than an opportunity for a newly empowered Presidentit's a political imperative. "Republicans now have the ability to do many of the things they wanted to do," says Mark Kvamme, a partner at Sequoia Capital, a Silicon Valley venture-capital firm. "They will have no excuses." Trouble is, Bush's economists are still debating the details of his 2003 agenda. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, worried about the impact of a huge stimulus on the deficit, wants to limit the size of any package. Besides, he believes the nation's economic malaise is limited largely to a few sectors, such as tech and telecom. White House economic adviser Lawrence B. Lindsey, who frets that a sluggish stock market could drag the economy down, wants to aid hard-hit investors and consumers. Council of Economic Advisers Chairman R. Glenn Hubbard, meanwhile, thinks puny investment is the culprit and wants to target tax relief to business. Then there's Bush political guru Karl Rove, who fears the electoral consequences of a bad economy and favors strong measures ASAP. Sighs one top official: "There is no common agreement on what the problem is." In the end, economic conditions in early 2003 will shape the package. If the economy appears to be slowly gaining momentum, Bush will be tempted to offer just a sprinkling of short-term incentives while pushing aggressive, longer-range tax cuts. But if things start unraveling, turning Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan's concerns about an economic "soft spot" into a swamp of malaise, the President will push a bigger stimulus p...