New nominee for treasury secretary, same old economic policy

The president nominates Henry Paulson, stumps for tax relief.

Published May 30, 2006 4:03PM (EDT)

Tuesday morning, President Bush nominated the CEO of Goldman Sachs, Henry Paulson, to replace John Snow as the secretary of the treasury. If confirmed by the Senate, Paulson will be Bush's third treasury secretary. (There was also Paul O'Neill, whom the White House would really like everyone to forget about.)

In the Rose Garden this morning, Bush talked up Paulson's impressive résumé, while pledging that the White House will continue to pursue the same-old fiscally irresponsible policy: tax cuts.

"Hank shares my philosophy that the economy prospers when we trust the American people to save, spend and invest their money as they see fit," Bush said. "The tax relief we delivered has helped set off the economic expansion that we're seeing today. And one of Hank's most important responsibilities will be to build on this success by working with Congress to maintain a pro-growth, low-tax environment."

Translation: Under this new guy, we'll do pretty much what we were doing before, which will be great, because we all agree how wonderful that's been for the economy.

Bush added: "Hank also understands that the government should spend the taxpayers' money wisely or not at all. He will work closely with Congress to help restrain the spending appetite of the federal government and keep us on track to meet our goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009." There was no mention of how voracious the spending appetite of that war in Iraq is, or how the national debt has grown under Bush. What a welcome to the team.


By Katharine Mieszkowski

Katharine Mieszkowski is a senior writer for Salon.

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