Cheney Forecasts 4% or Better GDP Growth Next Year

Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that the United States had “turned the corner” to economic recovery and he expected gross domestic product growth next year of 4% or better.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, Cheney also said the administration expected to cut the federal deficit “roughly in half” from next year’s level in the coming five years.

“Going into next year, we anticipate ... growth on the order of 4% or better in GDP,” Cheney said. “So I think we’ve turned the corner and we’re making significant progress, and that’s part of the normal business cycle, as well as the added unusual factors of a national emergency.”

Cheney spoke as a new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that 56% of Americans disapprove of the job President Bush is doing handling the economy -- the highest negative rating on the issue since he took office.

Nearly six in 10 of those polled were critical of the way Bush had handled the federal budget deficit, which the White House said would top $525 billion next year.

With deficits projected for the next 10 years, Cheney said he expected the deficit to be halved in five years’ time.

“We anticipate, even with the added spending [$87 billion for Iraq] that we’ve asked for now, we’ll cut the deficit roughly in half from where it will be next year over the next five years,” he told NBC. “So we will be moving in the right direction.”

He said Bush’s tax cuts accounted for “only about 25% of the deficit.”

Cheney also opposed a freeze on the tax cut for the top 1% of Americans.

“An awful lot of the returns in that top bracket are small businesses, and they provide an awful lot of the job growth in this economy,” he said. “I think it’s a serious mistake.”

According to a Bloomberg survey of economists last month, the economy was expected to gain strength in the second half and keep accelerating into 2004, when it would expand by the most in four years.

The survey, taken in early August, forecast a rise in the GDP at a 3.7% pace in the current quarter and at a 3.8% rate in the final three months.