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Bush rules out tax hike to fund recovery
(AP)
Updated: 2005-09-17 10:55 Bush, who declined to try to put a price tag on the costs, expressed no
worry.
"You bet it's going to cost money. But I'm confident we can handle it and I'm
confident we can handle our other priorities," he said during a news conference
with Russian President Vladimir Putin. "It's going to cost whatever it costs."
Bush said it's important that government quickly restore the region to give
people hope, and repeated his statement from Thursday night's speech from the
heart of the New Orleans' French Quarter that the federal government would cover
most of the cost of rebuilding schools, bridges and other infrastructure. Asked
who would pay for the work and how it would impact the nation's rising debt,
Bush said "the key question is to make sure that the costs are wisely spent."
"It means we're going to have to make sure we cut unnecessary spending," he
said. "It's going to mean that we maintain economic growth and we should not
raise taxes."
Without being asked, Putin stepped up to respond to Republican worries that
Bush was writing a blank check for hurricane recovery that would increase the
debt on generations to come.
The old Soviet Union had lived by the rule that money should not be taken
from the pockets of future generations, Putin said. "But we never thought about
the existing, current, present generations. And at the end of the day, we have
destroyed the country not thinking about the people living today."
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