Bush Administration Focus Efforts on the Economy

The US administration fell to the emergent situation due to the worsened economic slump.

Despite the US government has taken a series of policies to boost the economy such as the 7-times interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve Board (FRB), and a large-scale tax reduction of $ 6,300 billion to return the financial surplus to the taxpayers, the US economy has continuously gone downhill since the economy signaled the depression at the second half of last year.

As the Labor Department revealed on 7th that the jobless rate was 4.9 percent in August, increased by 0.4 percent from last Month, the White House was wrapped in anxiety.

President Bush expressed yesterday his agony with regard to the ominous economic situation in the meeting with the Republicans, saying that ``the economic depression is a real problem. It is so worrisome because the sluggish economy has hugely threatened the livelihood of many peoples.``

Prior to this meeting, when his senior adviser, Karl Rove, joined by more than a dozen prominent Republicans for a private dinner and heard an unvarnished critique of Mr. Bush`s style and strategy on 4th, the urgent and unambiguous message was delivered, If Mr. Bush did not take more forceful steps to resuscitate the economy, he would risk repeating the mistake that brought an early end to his father`s presidency, reported New York Times yesterday.

Former President Bush had once received the full support from the peoples with the victory in Gulf War, but he had to yield to Bill Clinton in 1992 presidential election since he failed to improve the worsened economy.

Clinton`s then saying, ``Stupid, It`s economy``, became a famous catch phrase that awakened the importance of the economy to the politicians.

President Bush, who knows well this fact, has focused on solving the economic problem in his own way. As soon as he visited Washington after his victory in the last year`s presidential election, he asked Chairperson of FRB Alan Greenspan to support his plan of tax cut.

As the situation has become more worsened in spite of such efforts, the White House recalibrated the presidential fall agenda, which will be more and more economic prescriptions, diluting what was initially planned as a season devoted largely to his education agenda.

The White House evaluated that the tax cut policy would be hard to sustain, and is deeply considering the plan to set up the new economic pump-priming policy and to offer it to the peoples via the official announcement of President Bush.

Han Ki-Heung eligius@donga.com