Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 10, 1990 TAG: 9005100278
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: R.W. APPLE THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Redefine the problem, shift the blame, play the good-government card, the strategists are saying, or voters will make us pay.
The mere suggestion that President Bush had modified his anti-tax oath to the extent of discussing taxes with the congressional leadership stirred Edward J. Rollins, co-chairman of the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee,to fear imminent disaster for his party.
To which Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., replied that, to the contrary, he thought the Republicans were interested in putting a "tax noose" around Democratic necks.
All this has started well before Tuesday's first meeting of the bipartisan group to seek a way out of the budget morass.
It may last all summer, and in their hour of need, some Republican tacticians have been heard to invoke, in a wistful sort of way, the name of Ronald Reagan.
Early in Reagan's first term as governor of California, he promised not to enact a state withholding tax. "My feet are in concrete on that one," he said anytime anyone pressed him to change his mind. But finally he was persuaded by members of his Cabinet.
"That sound you hear is the concrete cracking around my feet," he told a subsequent news conference.
Reagan got away with it at minimal political cost, his good cheer and capacity for self-mockery carrying the day as it would so often do later, in the nation at large.
President Bush and his party are unlikely to try anything even remotely so jaunty as that in trying to limit the damage from Bush's decision to launch no-holds-barred budget talks.
But there is no dearth of damage-control plans in either political party.
First on the Republican list, there's the Simpson strategy.
That is the argument that for national political purposes, at least, the only thing that really counts as "new taxes," as in "read my lips - no new taxes," is an increase in the income-tax rate for the average American wage earner.
It is the contention of Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, the Republican whip, that all the other things - sales taxes, value-added taxes, taxes on alcohol or tobacco or gasoline - are user fees or disincentives or revenue enhancements or perhaps national lotteries.
"No one is going to come out here and say that we're going to do anything at all with the income tax or income tax rates," the senator said in the White House driveway earlier this week. "Now that's what people generally think of when they think of taxes."
If voters insist on calling a tax a tax, there's the Gingrich gambit to fall back upon.
That is to change the focus, get people to take the long view, and look at the forest, not the trees.
"I don't think there's any question in this country which party is addicted to taxes and which party is reluctantly willing to negotiate," said Rep. Newt Gingrich of Georgia, Simpson's counterpart in the House.
Then there's the appeal to statesmanship.
Don Sipple, a Republican campaign consultant handling James Edgar, the party's nominee for governor in Illinois, says the trick is "to rotate the prism of public opinion so that the electorate focuses on the traits and qualities of a leader who is determined to act responsibly for the public good, and not on a tax bill."
Sipple has had practice at this; his man has come out in favor of retaining a state income surtax.
If all else fails, the Republicans will have to fall back on the wiles of their campaign technicians.
Or so Rep. Robert Michel of Illinois, the Republican leader in the House, testily suggested Wednesday when he was asked about Rollins' complaints.
"The real test of a campaign manager to me," Michel said, "is one who takes some fellow who casts a lot of tough votes, took some unpopular positions, probably got in trouble here or there doing something or other, and then extricating that candidate and making a winning campaign out of it all."
On the Democratic side, most tactics add up to the same thing: make the Republicans move first.
Many Democrats believe that after similar budget conferences last year they were snookered by the president and, especially, by his budget director, Richard Darman. So they are doubly wary this time.
Jim Sasser, D-Tenn., who heads the Senate Budget Committee, said the first thing he planned to ask Bush was, "What's your proposal?"
Rep. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., added, "I think we should hear straight from the president where he stands on taxes."
But some of the Democrats also think it crucial to come out of the negotiations with something they can sell to their supporters as fair, like a higher marginal tax rate on the taxpayers who make more than $200,000 a year, and not just things like gasoline or alcohol taxes that hit poorer taxpayers harder relative to their incomes.
What his party has not really figured out, a prominent Democrat said on the condition of anonymity, is "what we do if the negotiations reach an impasse and the president, with all his credibility, walks into the press room and says, `I did my best, but the Democrats just wouldn't talk about anything but taxes.' "
by CNB