US treasury secretary Mr John Snow, launching the Bush administration's defence of its new budget proposals, made clear on Tuesday that tax cuts remain a cornerstone of its plans for boosting economic growth.
"This administration appreciates that cutting taxes and exercising fiscal discipline must go hand-in-hand," the US treasury chief told the House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee.
Mr Snow called deficits "unwelcome" and attempted to head off any criticism that excessive tax-cutting zeal had helped to create them. "We are not under-taxed, and higher taxes will not be the solution to reducing deficits," he said. "Fiscal discipline, combined with economic growth, is the correct path."
Much of the hearing centred on the Bush administration's call to overhaul the social security retirement system. Democrats challenged Mr Snow's claim that it would be bankrupt by 2042 and that private retirement accounts for younger workers would help to ward that off.
Mr Snow said the fiscal 2006 budget submitted to Congress on Monday demonstrated the administration's commitment to spending control.
The administration is "making headway" toward cutting deficits and would cut it in half "by 2009", he said.
In the budget documents, the Bush administration shows that its goal of halving the budget deficit can be met by 2008, a year earlier than promised. But the budget uses as a starting point the $521 billion deficit that was forecast early last year, a figure critics say was inflated. - (Reuters)
