Unemployment peaked at 7% in the spring of 1961 before an economic rebound began that would continue to the end of the decade. President Kennedy then decided to break with the New Deal orthodoxy of high Federal taxes to force income equality. In a December 1962 speech, he announced his plans to reduce the top marginal tax rate to 75%, which one GOP Congressman wryly dubbed "the most Republican speech a president has made since McKinley". Although the president did not live to see his tax proposal passed, Lyndon Johnson quickly steered it through Congress, and by late-1965, real GDP growth was exceeding 6% a year.