Read My Lips - Keine Neuen Steuern

From the Times:

As Election Looms, Gerhard Schröder Seeks Tax Cut and New Spending

With one eye on the persistently stagnant German economy and another on an important coming state election, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder proposed both new tax cuts and new spending measures on Thursday in an effort to stem this country's relentless tide of unemployment.

In a much anticipated speech to the German Parliament, Mr. Schröder said he wanted to reduce corporate taxes to 19 percent from their current 25 percent to improve business competitiveness. He also announced a $2.6 billion program for rail and road expansion as well as measures to aid small businesses and the long-term unemployed.

While Mr. Schröder's speech was geared toward Germany's economic problems, it was seen here as an important political gesture, aimed at trying to forge an informal alliance with the main conservative opposition parties in a search for solutions to the country's stubborn economic woes. Unemployment, the worst of them, is now at levels unseen since the 1930's. The corporate tax reduction has long been favored by the opposition, which last week proposed what has come to be called a jobs summit meeting to develop common solutions to Germany's dismal economic performance...

No mention of how this ties in to projected German compliance with the No-Growth and Instabilty Pact for the Euro members.