Subject: Reagan-Bush Record and Misleading Attacks Threaten to Loosen GOP's Grip on Tax Issue Date: Published: 8/12/92 (162 lines) Source: Wall Street Journal. Copyright Dow Jones & Co. Inc. Politics & Policy -- Campaign '92: Reagan-Bush Record and Misleading Attacks Threaten to Loosen GOP's Grip on Tax Issue ---- By David Shribman and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum Staff Reporters of The Wall Street Journal HOUSTON -- Desperate Republican efforts to cling to the tax issue that helped win the past three presidential elections are being threatened by divisions in the party and the GOP's own hyperbolic attacks on Democratic rival Bill Clinton. Republican efforts to seize the tax offensive against Mr. Clinton were seriously hampered in preliminaries to the Republican National Convention here, as a platform subcommittee dropped language that was adopted only Monday, describing President Bush's acceptance of tax increases in 1990 as a "mistake." In feverish negotiations in an anteroom in the George Brown Convention Center here, Bush campaign leaders successfully argued that the original language was too likely to turn up in a Clinton ad. The platform writers retained language calling for the repeal of the 1990 tax increases. But the struggle over how to characterize the tax issue pointed up the party's difficulty in regaining the tax issue, the cornerstone of Ronald Reagan's appeal and successes, as the tool for reinvigorating the president's lagging campaign. "We should have the tax issue," argued Rep. Vin Weber of Minnesota, the author of the original language, who finally acceded to dropping the language in a closed-door meeting with Charles Black, the convention manager. "We've got to get it back. Given that we don't have the Cold War any more, we'd better darn well have taxes." Further complicating the Republican efforts to use the issue this year is that their allegations against Mr. Clinton are being couched in harsh, misleading language that may not stand up to scrutiny. President Bush has alleged that Mr. Clinton "proposes the largest tax increase in American history," while Vice President Dan Quayle and other Republicans have accused the Democratic nominee of raising taxes in Arkansas 128 times in his 12 years as governor there. But the evidence suggests that the Republicans themselves have raised taxes more often than Gov. Clinton has. To be sure, Gov. Clinton's record in Arkansas does contradict his tax message to the voters. A central element of his presidential program is to raise taxes on wealthy people, but in Arkansas many of the tax increases during his governorship have been on sales taxes, which are regressive. But tax experts generally exonerate him of the charge of promoting the biggest tax increase in U. S. history. That distinction, most agree, belongs to the increase signed into law by President Reagan in 1982, when Mr. Bush was vice president. That bill called for an estimated $152.3 billion in tax increases over four years. In today's dollars, the Reagan increase would total more than $200 billion. The Clinton proposal, by contrast, calls for $150 billion over four years. The Bush allegations are "downright deceptive," says Gene Sperling, economic director of the Clinton campaign. Among other things, he says, the Bush campaign fails to mention the $104 billion in tax cuts over four years that the Clinton plan also contains, including $60 billion for middle-class tax relief, $12 billion for the earned income tax credit for the poor, and $25 billion for an investment tax credit for corporations. Bush aides defend their calculations, which they say don't even take into account the burden on small businesses and middle-income people of increased costs that they assert will result from Mr. Clinton's proposed national health-care and job-training programs. GOP analysts say they base their assertion that the Clinton tax increase would be the largest in history not on what the 1982 Reagan bill was projected to raise, but on a Senate GOP estimate of what the bill actually brought in, a figure the Republicans put at only $92 billion. Clinton aides counter that even if the GOP estimate were correct, which they don't concede, the net Reagan increase was still far larger than Mr. Clinton's proposal when offsetting tax reductions are figured in. The charge of 128 Arkansas tax increases is also inaccurate. The Republicans' official accounting of Mr. Clinton's Arkansas record lists 58 tax increases and 70 increases in fees of various sorts. But three of the items on the list circulated by the Bush-Quayle campaign are numbers inserted where there is no tax provision, but rather the second line of the previous tax-increase listing. One item isn't either a tax or a fee increase, but rather increases the number of days of dog racing for the benefit of two funds. The Clinton campaign's count is that there are 49 actual tax increases on the GOP list, seven of which have expired or been repealed. The list also doesn't include tax cuts over the same period, which total 48, one of which was temporary. In other words, the Clinton camp says, the number of tax increases, 42, is less than the number of tax decreases, 47, that are still on the books. Using the Bush campaign's own standard of counting up tax increases, a study by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service shows that during the Bush administration 78 taxes have been raised for a total increase of $40.7 billion. During the entire Reagan-Bush era beginning with the 1981 tax bill, 327 tax increases have been signed into law with a total revenue gain from those provisions of $219.8 billion, the research service said. This number doesn't include an estimated 250 tariff increases from 1981 and dozens of other fees that were raised or proposed to be raised by the Reagan and Bush administrations. The 1990 tax increase Mr. Bush signed into law was projected to raise $106.4 billion over four years and $137.2 billion over five years. Experts still dispute whether a 1984 tax increase signed by Mr. Reagan was larger, but say there is no question that Mr. Bush's increase was one of the biggest ever. The tax increases in 1982, 1984 and 1990 "are the three largest, with the '82 being the largest, and '84 and '90 being comparable in size," says Barry Dennis, a partner at Price Waterhouse & Co., and a former top government revenue estimator. The changes in the GOP platform agreed to yesterday would now put the party on record as saying the 1990 tax increases were "recessionary," rather than "a mistake." Further, the new language says the taxes should "ultimately" be repealed, making it a long-range rather than an immediate target. The issue of the platform language isn't only an embarrassment for President Bush. It is also a problem for Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, who was one of the chief congressional architects of the tax-raising budget agreement, and for other Republicans who went along. Even as the platform attacks congressional Democrats for the tax increases, it also suggests a weakness on Mr. Bush's part. "The Democratic Congress held President Bush and all Americans hostage, refusing to take even modest steps to control spending, unless taxes were increased, and the American economy has suffered," the platform says. Several top Republicans, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Jack Kemp, are arguing that strong platform language won't be sufficient to give Mr. Bush the political offensive again. Instead, they say, the president should make tax-cutting a major theme of his acceptance speech next Thursday evening. While acquiescing to the new tax language, Mr. Weber and his allies also pressed Bush intimates to make taxes a major theme, arguing that Mr. Bush should assert he won't consort with the Democrats any more. Taxes weren't the only issue the platform-writers were focusing on yesterday, however. The full 107-member platform committee debated the party's position on abortion late into the evening, with anti-abortion forces firmly in control. In an effort to strike the abortion language entirely from the platform, abortion-rights advocates could muster only 16 votes, far short of the 27 needed to bring the issue to the convention floor next week. In the debate that preceded that vote, only two members of the committee spoke out for eliminating the provision. The platform-writers also added provisions against giving away hypodermic needles or condoms in the battle against acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS, and they urged state legislators to oppose same-sex marriages and to prohibit same-sex couples from providing foster care for youngsters. But the Bush campaign left no doubt that taxes was most on its mind. The "daily line" for yesterday, distributed to high campaign officials, emphasized "the Clinton tax hikes." Some, though, were less than enthusiastic at the line. "We have to say more than just that Clinton's a big taxer," said Donald Devine, a conservative Republican strategist. One of the most glum was Arthur Laffer, one of the founding fathers of the supply-side movement. "It's too late, the damage has been done," he said. "There's no way to recoup virginity." --- James M. Perry contributed to this article. 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