Bush official plays down opposition to tax plan
Posted on 01/13/2003 3:32:50 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
Bush official plays down opposition to tax plan
Some in GOP skeptical, but Evans says program still not understood
01/13/2003
WASHINGTON - The White House's lead salesman to Congress for the president's economic plan played down opposition from Senate Republicans, saying Sunday that the proposal is not fully understood.
"I hope I'm going to take my business experience up to the Hill and talk about how the economy works and how businesses plan and how families plan and how they need a plan that has some permanency to it," Commerce Secretary Don Evans said on CBS' Face the Nation.
The $674 billion plan would abolish federal taxes on stock dividends, speed up promised income tax cuts and send rebate checks to 34 million low- and middle-income parents. The 10-year package goes to Congress amid rising government deficits and as Democrats gear up to challenge President Bush's re-election bid.
Sens. John McCain of Arizona and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, two Republicans who opposed Bush's across-the-board tax-rate reductions in 2001, also are skeptical, as are some other Republicans.
"The president just laid out the plan this last week, and so I'm not sure anybody has had the chance to fully go through ... all elements of the plan and totally understand what it means to the economic strength of this country," Mr. Evans said on CNN's Late Edition.
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who was fired last month when Mr. Bush decided he needed a stronger team to deal with the lackluster economy and sell Congress on the new round of tax cuts, said the plan would have little or no effect on the economy.
"I would not have done it," he said at a Friday taping of a Pittsburgh public affairs show that aired on Sunday. Mr. O'Neill, speaking for the first time since being forced from his post, said money from the president's tax-cut plan would be better spent on Social Security.
Democrats say the package favors the rich, which the White House argues is because the wealthy pay by far the most in taxes.
"This is a stimulus for the rich and a sedative for the rest," Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle said on ABC's This Week, calling the plan risky and reckless.
The top 1 percent of taxpayers, those with incomes of $374,000 or more, would get 28.3 percent of Mr. Bush's tax cut, for an average savings of $24,428, according to an analysis by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute. The 20 percent of Americans in the middle, earning $29,000 to $46,000, would get 6.1 percent of the benefits from Mr. Bush's plan, an average tax saving of $265.
Sen. John Breaux, D-La., who supported Mr. Bush's previous tax-cut package, said on CBS' Face the Nation that the plan must be pared down, with more help for middle- and lower-income Americans. Just 8 percent of people in Louisiana would reap tax benefits from the president's proposed elimination on dividends, he said.
"Even in the president's party, there are members who have had significant problems with this proposal," Mr. Breaux said. "It's always good politics to propose a tax cut, but it also should be good public policy. And I don't think that it meets that criteria right now."
Among the chief concerns for lawmakers in both parties is the growing deficit.
"The way to reduce the deficit is economic growth," Mr. Evans said.
It's the A/P and the 'RATS that are confusing the issue with their class warfare approach to politics, imho...
And the McCain and Lincoln Chafee RINO's, Paul O'Neill and others aren't helping matters either.
A tax cut will help those who pay taxes. The 'RATS et al want to turn it on it's head and make it a wealth redistribution program I think. I thought that wall was torn down over 10 years ago.
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