Bush Trumpets Tax Cuts as Refunds Hit Mail

July 20, 2001 -- The checks are in the mail.

That was the message of the day from the Bush administration as the Internal Revenue Service prepared to send out the first of more than 90 million tax rebate checks.

Bush: ‘Help Is on the Way’

"Today, the benefits of tax relief begin coming home for everyone who pays income taxes in America," President Bush said as he addressed a rally in Kansas City, Mo., via satellite from Genoa, Italy, where the president was attending a Group of Eight summit. "Tax relief is now as real as a stamp, an envelope and a check."

The refunds of up to $300 for individuals and $600 for married couples account for some $38 billion of the 11-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut passed by Congress in May and signed into law by the president last month.

(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

"For all those who feel their taxes and bills are too high and they could use a little help, help is on the way," Bush said, as Vice President Dick Cheney, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and key Republican members of Congress watched on at a campaign-style event at the Treasury Department's Regional Financial Management Service Center in Kansas City, where hundreds of thousands of the first rebate checks were processed.

Cheney: 'A Promise Made … A Promise Kept'

Tax relief, a core tenet of conservative orthodoxy, was the centerpiece of Bush's campaign for the White House last year. The enactment of the plan, albeit a scaled-down version of the president's original $1.6 trillion proposal, was a major political victory for the president, who argued an across-the-board reduction in federal income tax rates was sorely needed to boost a flagging economy.

"By helping tens of millions of Americans, we will help our economy," the president said today. "The combination of this tax relief and lower interest rates should help get it moving again."

The sweeping tax cut is the only major White House initiative that has become law since the president took office in January. The administration used the mailing of the first batch of checks as an opportunity to tout a key legislative accomplishment.

"A few months ago tax relief was dismissed by many as a far-fetched idea that wasn't going aywhere … Yet here we are, six months to the day after President Bush was sworn in, sending out the first batch of checks," Cheney said, with dozens of U.S. Mail crates filled with envelopes representing the nearly 92 million rebate checks that are set to be mailed out between now and September stacked behind him.

"They represent a promise made to the American people, a promise remembered and a promise kept."

Dems Warn of Dire Consequences

But congressional Democratic leaders continued to assail the mammoth tax cut, arguing it is recklessly squandering projected federal budget surpluses and warning it could have dire consequences for key domestic programs.

"It is weakening our economy, not strengthening," House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, D-Mo., told reporters on Capitol Hill this morning. "It is causing us to start to go into deficits [and] to start invading the Medicare and Social Security trust funds."

Gephardt and Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., had mounted an unsuccessful effort to further reduce the overall amount of tax relief in the bill and target more of its benefits toward the middle class.

Because people who pay payroll taxes, but who don't earn enough to pay federal income taxes, are not eligible for the rebates, it is estimated that roughly one-quarter of all workers will not receive a refund check.

"I don't know what you say to that 20 or 25 percent of taxpayers who don't get a check in the mail who may be expecting one, and they happen to be the people that need the checks the most," Daschle said at a news conference today.

The last two digits of taxpayers' social security numbers are used to determine when their rebates will be mailed. People whose numbers end in 00-09 should receive their checks next week, while people whose numbers end in 90-99 are expected to get their checks in the last week of September.