NewsMax.com
Monday, March 26, 2001

This move by the Connecticut senator, who was the Democrats' failed vice presidential nominee last year, is the latest in a scramble by congressional leaders of both political parties to come up with the winning formula for an across-the-board tax cut this year.

And it is drawing attention away from President Bush's plan for a $1.6 trillion tax reduction to be spread out gradually over the next 10 years.

Interviewed on Tony Snow's "Fox News Sunday,'' Lieberman dismissed the Bush plan, saying it would give relatively little tax relief this first year – about $5.6 billion, compared with the $60 billion in his proposal.

''The economy needs help now,'' Lieberman said. "If we try to work [Bush's plan] out, it will be next year before we get any money back to people.

"Let's cut checks and send what comes to $300 to every one of the almost 200 million taxpayers in America – mom, dad, kids, whoever worked and does the payroll tax or income tax."

Lieberman also said his $300 immediate rebate would, itself, be tax-exempt.

Once such a bill is signed into law, he said, "I think, from what we're finding out, that the treasury can do that pretty quickly.''

Since the refund from his tax cut would go to working families, Lieberman said, "they're going to spend it. And that's what the economy needs for a bit of a lift right now."

Lieberman's move is being construed as evidence that he is already at work laying the basis for his own run at the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004.

Even though Lieberman's choice of $60 billion in immediate tax relief is the same figure Republican lawmakers began using recently and is now supported by other Democrats in the Senate, his is the most-recent proposal to be thrown on the table – thus giving him, at least for now, the public relations edge.

It put Republicans, including the president, in the posture of accusing Democrats of "me-too-ism."

The GOP Senate majority leader, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who has been trying to rally fellow Republican senators and moderate Democrats around an immediate tax refund of approximately the same size as that proposed by Lieberman, was trying to regain the advantage of being out front that he recently enjoyed.

"When Democrats say, 'Let's do more, let's take $50 or $60 billion and make it available to the people quicker,' we're like Br'er Rabbit: 'Throw me into that briar patch,' " Lott jested in an interview Sunday on CNN.

Lott is insisting that any immediate tax refund must be a part of a bill that embraces Bush's basic plan – reduction in tax rates, an end to the "death tax," reduction in the "marriage penalty" and doubling of the child-care tax credit to $1,000 from $500.

In an effort to gain more Republican and Democratic support for his tax-cut plan in the 50-50 divided Senate, Bush recently reversed his position on a "trigger," which would reverse his tax cut if the economy should worsen severely.

Originally opposed to any such trigger, Bush now says he's open to the idea.

Not so with the Republican "whip" in the House of Representatives, Tom DeLay of Texas, who told NBC's "Meet the Press" he is still adamantly opposed.

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