He would abolish the income tax for the vast bulk of Americans and replace the revenue with a 12.5 percent value-added tax.
It's not nearly as big a problem as the 40 percent of children who are born out of wedlock.
He announced pay cuts of about 5 percent for civil servants — and 15 percent for government ministers — as well as other measures totaling 15 billion euros.
The steps included increasing the broader retirement age to 65 and cutting public salaries to bring the deficit down from the current 13.6 percent of G.D.P. to less than 3 percent in 2014.
In this slump, it is down almost 7 percent, and still has not really begun to recover.
This month, the Portuguese government agreed with the main opposition party on more austerity measures to cut its deficit faster than planned, to 4.6 percent of Portugal's gross domestic product next year from 9.4 percent last year.
It has acknowledged that the deficit, forecast at 8 percent of G.D.P. this year, needs to fall.
Going back decades, such spending had never fallen more than 3 percent per capita in a recession.
He would simply give every family a tax exemption of $100,000, which would eliminate the income tax for 90 percent of those now filing returns.
Earlier on Thursday, Eddie Obeid told ABC radio there was only a 1% chance he would be prosecuted over his conduct, and that the "Hollywood-style" Icac report was "all about grabbing media headlines".
Overall, 1,540 offenders breached the terms of their licences, up 18% year on year, while 104 breached an order, up from 73 the previous year.
