NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - The tax cuts promoted by President Bush have created jobs and should be made permanent, Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday evening.
Cheney, speaking in New York at MONEY Magazine's third annual Money Summit, cited the creation of nearly one million jobs in the past three months, among other signs of an economic rebound, and said three tax cuts pushed through by the Bush administration in each of the past three years were responsible.
"It's pretty clear the President's tax relief has done what it was designed to do -- add momentum to the American economy and help generate new jobs," Cheney said.
But Cheney also noted that those tax cuts are scheduled to expire and said that the administration would urge Congress to make them permanent.
"Higher taxes now would choke the economic growth and discourage the strong job creation we're now beginning to see," Cheney said.
Critics of the administration say the tax cuts mainly benefited wealthier Americans and have helped create the largest federal budget deficit, as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), in about two decades.
Cheney did call for fiscal discipline and repeated a promise to cut the budget deficit in half in five years.
Sponsored by MONEY magazine, the Money Summit is a gathering of more than 90 financial leaders and regulators, including Vanguard founder John Bogle, Smith Barney CEO Sallie Krawcheck, Treasury Secretary John Snow and New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
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