NewsMax.com
Friday, March 23, 2001

The Republican president is getting an assist from another swelling sentiment across America – concern that the economy, reflected by a collapsing stock market, may be headed for recession if it's not already there.

The latest move in the congressional bidding to ride that incoming tide of popular enthusiasm for lower taxation has come from Republicans.

On Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., announced that his GOP colleagues have agreed to push for an immediate $60 billion slash in taxes.

That's not merely speeding up Bush's plan to phase in gradually $1.6 trillion of tax relief over the next 10 years.

It is an additional $60 billion cut, not part of that $1.6 trillion.

It is also in addition to Bush's plan to reduce the "marriage penalty" aspect of the current income tax.

And it is in addition to his proposal to end or at least drastically reduce the "death tax."

The additional, immediate-relief plan advanced by Lott is in obvious response to criticism by congressional Democrats that tax relief under Bush's original 10-year proposal is so far down the road it would have little effect on stimulating the economy.

Lott's move has, for the moment at least, taken that issue away from Democrats.

Their immediate reaction has been to complain that it doesn't provide enough immediate relief – an argument they have some difficult squaring with another of their standing criticisms: Bush's plans provide too much relief.

They are saying immediate relief – which they want – under Lott's new proposal is too large to fit within the revenue projections Bush is using, which they have always contended were too optimistic.

If that sounds inconsistent, it is only because it is, and it illustrates the box congressional Democrats have opened and Republicans have ushered them into.

Meanwhile, Bush, who has been criticized by both liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans for not taking the lead in calling for immediate tax relief, has stuck consistently with his plan for relief distributed over the next decade.

That, not immediate relief, is what the president has been selling to enthusiastic audiences as he tours the country. The effect has been to create pressure on Congress to enact some kind of tax relief quickly.

With the stock market sinking and recession worries mounting, the response by both parties on Capitol Hill has been to find a way to provide immediate, substantial tax relief.

Thus, without incurring the risk of being identified with a specific immediate-relief plan that Democrats would surely attack, Bush is in the position of being able to let a consensus develop in the 50-50 split Senate that he can support.

That contributes to the frustration of Democrats who are in search of a tax-relief issue to take to the electorate in the 2002 congressional elections.

Here's the latest development, as reported by the Associated Press:

Lott revealed the GOP gambit by stating, "The first thing is to do as much as we can, earlier, and in the first year, because of the economy.

"What you're doing is you're front-end loading it."

Agreeing that "the American economy needs to see a positive sign that we are concerned," Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, R-N.M., outlined a blueprint of the GOP plan.

It provides for $60 billion of the $93 billion budget surplus projected for this year to be set aside for tax cuts that would go into effect this year.

It would not give taxpayers a cash rebate this year, but neither would it take away from Bush's across-the-board tax cuts over 10 years.

As part of the good-news portion of the new GOP plan, Lott said:

"The other items [cutting the marriage penalty and the estate tax], while they need to be done, could still come at a later date."

All that, Lott and Domenici insisted, can be accomplished within the projected budget surplus.

Taking a look at it from the House of Representatives, where Bush's original plan is moving on a fast track, Rep. Charles Rangel of New York, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, said, "We would like to know which of the president's recommendations he would like to drop."

But Rep. Bill Thomas, R-Calif., chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, insisted the numbers will work out: "We still have room."

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