Pelosi: Stimulus, Working Class Tax Cut Now

Thursday, November 6, 2008 4:24 PM

By: Greg Brown

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she wants to hurry up and enact a stimulus package of between $60 billion and $100 billion, and then establish a permanent, direct tax cut early next year to help the flailing U.S. economy.

"Let's see if we can't do something, working together now, that gives us a two month jump," she told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.

The tax cut would not include a capital-gains cut and Pelosi doesn’t want a tax rebate like before. Instead, she favors an adjustment to tax withholding tables that would put more money in workers’ pockets immediately.

Pelosi’s aides later said any decision would be linked to both payroll and incomes taxes.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank told Reuters on Wednesday that any such plan would have three phases, including immediate help for states, the unemployed, and the working class.

"It's the economic program of aid to the states and increased unemployment compensation, perhaps followed up early next year by some kind of middle class and working class tax cut," Frank said.

Later, work could continue on unfreezing credit markets and avoiding home foreclosures through the already approved $700 billion bailout bill.

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