
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 28, 1990                   TAG: 9006290685
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

PRESIDENT'S LIPS TELL DIFFERENT STORY NOW

GEORGE BUSH is too dignified to be dragged anywhere kicking and screaming, so he gave in to the inevitable as gracefully as he could. Read his lips now: A deficit-reduction program must include "tax revenue increases."

Notice he didn't say "new taxes," which he promised in the 1988 campaign to resist. But he's close enough. Same with his acknowledgment that the White House and Congress need to consider reforms in entitlement programs. That means, chiefly, Social Security, an even touchier topic around Washington.

This doesn't qualify as a profile in courage, but probably the president's belated candor won't hurt him too much with the electorate. Polls indicate many Americans believed all along that Bush (1) didn't really mean his pledge against new taxes, or (2) he meant it to last only a year or so. Voters could take this promise to signify that Bush would be less inclined than his Democratic opponent to look for excuses to rifle taxpayers' pockets.

The people - as usual ahead of their elected leaders - recognize that the deficits will not yield to palaver and will not be swallowed up by economic growth. A combination of spending cuts and tax increases is needed. A few Democratic members of Congress have been bold enough to talk specifics. Most have held back, waiting for Bush to yield, so that the White House could not hang the tax-increase albatross around the Democrats' neck.

An interesting aspect is that Bush is not yet taking all of his own party with him. The no-new-taxes promise was not only a way of wooing votes from the general electorate; it was also a sop to the Republican right, which feared Bush would retreat from the Reagan agenda. The GOP sees the tax issue as one that clearly and positively differentiates it from the Democratic Party.

That issue loses some of its utility in a time when the size and persistence of deficits make plain the need for new revenues. Voters already know that if there is a tax-and-spend party, it's not the Republican. Since Reagan, the GOP has been the borrow-and-spend party.

For their part, Democratic leaders in Congress are prudent not to crow about Bush's retreat. They still have hard and painful work to do with him in putting together a deficit-reduction package. One may hope that each side can now address the other frankly and unambiguously. There's been enough lip-reading.

by CNB