DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: No one is thinking about the economy more than the president-elect, George W. Bush. He is meeting with a bunch of economic and business experts. Let's go to Austin, Texas, where out Tony Clark is standing with more on that -- Tony.</s>TONY CLARK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Daryn, you know, over the past quarter it has been a hard-hit economy in the high-tech sector, and that's what the president-elect, George W. Bush, will be focusing on today. He is going to meet with more than a dozen high-tech industry leaders from companies like IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Dell Computers, and the like. And they are going to be talking not only about how the economy is treating them, but also what needs to be done about that. One other interesting note in that there will be talking about education, and education reform. And the reason the president-elect says this ties in with business is because he believes that the education system needs to be geared towards a high-tech industry. He's using this meeting today, and the one yesterday, with other business leaders, also as a means to talk about, to promote his $1.3 trillion tax cut. He said, yesterday, that he thought the Fed's move to cut interest rates was a bold move, and that that tax rate cut as well would be a bold move and a much needed move. The information he received yesterday in meeting with the business leaders was what he described as a very bad picture for the economy. He said he was told about the sales being off, the companies were having to trim their work force. That executives were concerned about the high-level of consumer debt. And he said, all of those kinds of things, signaling an economic slowdown, could be dealt with, both with the cut in the interest rate and also gives him greater impetus to push his tax rate cuts -- Daryn.</s>KAGAN: Tony Clark, in Austin, Texas, thank you very much.
Bush Uses Economic Weakness to Push for Tax-Cut Plan