Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, January 26, 1993 TAG: 9301260029
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
ENERGY TAX HINTS KEPT ALIVE
The Clinton administration gave fresh signals Monday it may propose tax increases that would hit most Americans as a way of fighting the federal deficit. A broad-based tax on energy consumption is among "a lot of options," President Clinton said.A day after Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen floated the possibility of such a tax, Clinton and White House officials did their best to keep it aloft - even as they asserted there had been no final decisions.
"Absolutely, yes," responded White House communications director George Stephanopoulos when asked specifically whether a consumption tax on energy was under discussion as Clinton puts together his economic package.
Stephanopoulos also stressed that cuts in entitlement spending - mandated benefit programs like Social Security - also are "on the table" as the plan takes shape.
Clinton took a step further toward that package - to be outlined in his maiden State of the Union address next month - by signing an executive order creating a Cabinet-level National Economic Council.
The council, headed by former New York investment banker Robert Rubin, will coordinate economic policy in much the same way that the National Security Council oversees foreign and defense policy.
The panel is made up secretaries of most key Cabinet agencies and other top policy advisers.
Also on Monday, Clinton put his wife, Hillary, in charge of a task force that will hammer out his blueprint for a major overhaul of America's health-care system.
Clinton called his wife, until recently a corporate lawyer, "a first lady of many talents" with a unique gift for cutting through complex issues and forging consensus.
It is the first time any president has assigned his wife to formulate major domestic policy.
Tackling the troubles in the U.S. health-care system - which costs more than any in the world but leaves tens of millions of Americans without health insurance - was one of Clinton's bedrock promises in the 1992 campaign.
He said he was grateful that his wife would "be sharing some of the heat I expect to generate."
"I want it done - now," the president said at the close of an hour-long meeting with his wife, a half-dozen Cabinet secretaries, his Office of Management and Budget director and other senior White House aides on the President's Task Force on National Health Care Reform.
He noted that Hillary Clinton chaired an Arkansas Education Standards Committee that played a leading role in pushing through school reforms there a decade ago while he was governor, and also had chaired a state panel on rural health problems.