Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 8, 1990 TAG: 9007100422
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CAL THOMAS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Now, President Bush's loose lips about taxes may well have placed Republican ships in jeopardy for the fall election and torpedoed the conservative-center coalition that has governed successfully for the past decade.
Whatever the tax mix - even if limited to an increase in the "sin" tax on alcohol and tobacco, or a boost in gasoline taxes - the psychological damage has been done.
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Jack Kemp tells me he is convinced there will be no increase in personal income taxes and that additional revenue will be raised by increases in other areas, by spending cuts and by revising the capital-gains tax structure, but the president gave no such assurance at his June 28 news conference.
A preview of the call for "tax revenue increases" may have come in an encounter between Budget Director Richard Darman and conservative activist Paul Weyrich, who heads the Free Congress Foundation. The meeting took place at the end of May in the White House mess. As Weyrich, who was having lunch with someone else, prepared to leave, he stopped by Darman's table.
The conversation, Weyrich recalls, went like this:
Weyrich: "I hope you people understand the politics of what you're doing."
Darman: "What am I doing that could possibly interest you?"
Weyrich: "Raising my taxes."
Darman: "I don't get involved in politics. I'm into governing."
Weyrich: "With all due respect to the notion of governing, if the politics don't work out right, you won't be around to govern. This is not a policy difference; this is a question of the integrity of your boss."
As he left, Weyrich says he heard "uproarious laughter" from Darman's table.
He is right, though. The voters believed that George Bush was a man of principle because of his consistency on the tax issue. Many have gone along with his stand on issues involving most-favored-nation treatment of China, trade negotiations with the Soviets and Lithuanian independence.
But now that he appears - and appearances count in politics - to have conceded his strongest political bargaining chip, what's left to distinguish between Democrats and Republicans? Only abortion, and if he can fudge on taxes, what is to prevent him from doing the same on abortion?
House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich strongly disagrees that the president has given anything away.
"We threw an interception and the other side, helped by the press, scored a touchdown, but this is a long game," Gingrich tells me.
"If the Democrats did not control the House and Senate, one of the first two Bush budgets, which met the Gramm-Rudman deficit reduction targets, would have passed," he says.
Gingrich is furious with the Democratic leadership, "a party whose last two presidential candidates asked for new taxes and insisted that President Bush utter the word `taxes' before they would begin negotiations."
Gingrich calls Democrats "hypocritical" and "corrupt" and says they "haven't had the guts to bring spending under control."
He believes the Democrats "peaked on June 26," the day of the president's announcement that tax revenue increases would be part of the budget summit negotiations. He says the Republican leadership wants real budget cuts that will be locked in for five years and that if they don't get them, "there is no deal, period."
"The Democrats have raised the ante on their failure to help George Bush govern," says Gingrich. "He's done everything he could to placate the party of tax addicts."
But that is the problem, isn't it? Placating and leadership are two different routes that lead to different destinations.
Stuart Butler, domestic policy director at Heritage Foundation, correctly notes that tax increases will choke off the economic expansion faster than the deficit.
"The key difference between growing and stagnating economies," wrote Butler in The New York Times, "is not whether governments run a surplus or a deficit, but the total cost of government. Whether government finances its activities by borrowing from its citizens (a deficit) or simply confiscating their money (taxes) is secondary to how much money government consumes."
President Bush notes that Ronald Reagan caved in to the tax-and-spend liberals in 1982. That proves the point for Bush's critics, not for him. The tax boost was not used to reduce the deficit but for new spending programs. Without something more than promises from the Democrats, any new taxes will throw more good money after bad.
Politically, the president's new posture on taxes is going to hurt Republican congressional candidates in the fall election. Republicans, who ought to be confident with a president of their party in the White House, are nervous. You can tell by their quivering lips.
Los Angeles Times Syndicate
by CNB