Fed File: To exchange tax message, Bush comes to Chicago.(President George W. Bush speaks of tax-cut plan in Chicago, Illinois)(Brief Article)

Crain's Chicago Business, March, 2001 by MERRION, PAUL

As political theater, President Bush's trip to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange last week was an odd backdrop for selling his tax-cut proposal. With Democrats arguing that most of the benefits are skewed toward the richest taxpayers, you'd think the president's handlers would choose someplace else to sell his message.

In their brightly colored jackets, the traders look like egalitarian worker bees, but in reality, they are, as a group, some of the wealthiest people in Chicago. However, this was all about generating a television image, one that called for an exchange full of enthusiastic support for tax cuts. The idea was to underscore how tax cuts would be good for the economy, and thus good for the markets and the millions of ordinary Americans who now...

Read the rest of this article with a Free Trial at HighBeam Research.

Premium Content Partnership | HighBeam Research provides an in-depth online archive library of reference works.