John Spratt: “we said we wanted to go to everybody who filed a return in the year 2002 and who earned up to $6,000 in income and give…”

“we said we wanted to go to everybody who filed a return in the year 2002 and who earned up to $6,000 in income and give them 10 percent of what they had earned, up to a ceiling of $600, and send them a check for it right away. That way we would have reached 17 million American families who did not get a rebate in the year 2002. We would have put money in the pockets of people who were most likely to spend it, $60 billion to $70 billion for that purpose alone. We also said we want to go to the States and help the States because what they are doing is contractionary, and if we do not counteract that to some extent then they will undercut what we are doing and there will not be any effect on our economy. Medicaid, a shared State-Federal program, we said we wanted to give the States $15 billion to $20 billion to help them meet the extraordinary cost of the Medicaid program. We also said as to businesses, we wanted to give them an incentive to invest; for small businesses, we said $75,000. You buy that new equipment or new computer or new desk, you can write it off the year you buy it, the year you purchase it. And as to large businesses, we said, we will give them a bonus if you go invest it in 2003.”