US President Bush holds first Cabinet meeting in two months

His second term secured, the US President sits down with his Cabinet on Thursday to begin work on tough-to-keep campaign promises.

His second term secured, President George W Bush is reaching out and asking the 55 million people who voted to oust him from office, to get behind the ambitious agenda he has laid out for the next four years.

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The work of making good on a raft of tough-to-keep campaign promises, begins on Thursday, when Bush sits down with his Cabinet for their first such meeting since August 2.

In a quietly jubilant victory speech on Wednesday that came 21 hours after the polls closed, Bush outlined the goals he plans to start work on immediately and pursue in the next four years, a period, he termed, "a season of hope."

He pledged to keep up the fight against terrorism, press for stable democracies in Iraq and Afghanistan, simplify the tax code, allow younger workers to invest some of their social security withholdings in the stock market, continue to raise accountability standards in public schools and "uphold our deepest values and family and faith."

Other items include reforms in the nation's intelligence community.