Politics: Dole and Taxes
Norquist, Grover G .
"Politics: Dole and Taxes" Dole and Taxes Tax cutting is an issue only Republicans can lose. I t wasn't supposed to happen this way. After the incumbent Democrat championed a record tax increase that caused...
...Pennsylvania's Tom Ridge cut total state spending for the first time in twenty-five years while also slashing the business income tax by $200 million...
...The Dole-Kemp proposal bears the not very exciting title, "Six Common-Sense Steps to a Vibrant Economy," but it just may enable the Kansan to "pull a Christie...
...she had to keep pounding that message home to voters, day in and day out...
...it would be inflationary, the press howled, and create a recession, and then a depression-harsh words at a time of double-digit inflation and four years of declining wages...
...This must have been music to the ears of the Clinton administration, which had been catching hell for what Daniel Patrick Moynihan called "the largest tax increase in the history of public finance in the United States or anywhere else in the world...
...She angered gun owners by refusing to support repeal of Florio's...
...She placed herself to Florio's left by criticizing a new state welfarereform law that capped benefits for women who bore more than two children while on the dole...
...The plan also includes the tort reform proposal Clinton has repeatedly vetoed, as well as Sen...
...to institute regulatory and tort reform...
...All this builds on what Republicans have learned from recent presidential campaigns-the tax issue is always central in voters' minds...
...Television by Grover G. Norquist commercials explain the plan and attack Clinton's record on taxes...
...Voters are thus reminded why taxes are an emotional issue: they comprise 43 percent of the cost of a hotel room, 54 percent of a gallon of gas, 35 percent of a can of soda, and 31 percent of a loaf of bread...
...By focusing less on issues than on the "horse race"-the polls and personalities, the campaign in-fighting and personnel shifts-the press serves to deflect attention from substantive issues like taxes...
...An apt image, but it ignores the pivotal role of the "referee"that is, the media...
...Polls show that Americans believe that as much as half of all federal spending is wasted...
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...And, of course, there is the example of Christie Todd Whitman: she cut New Jersey's income tax rates by 30 percent in just two years...
...And, like the Whitman campaign, Dole's is finding strong allies in the taxpayers' movement, the property-rights organizations, and business groups, by placing the tax issue front and center...
...The campaign has commissioned an initial press run of zoo,o00 copies of the plan, and GOPAC is to release a soft-cover explanation of this year's tax and economic issues...
...It'll hardly be a lonely task, given all GOP congressional candidates, Republican governors, and conservative groups who've been leading with the issue...
...Her brother was removed as day-to-day manager of her campaign in favor of Ed Rollins, just back from his embarrassing stint with Ross Perot...
...P O L I T I C S Dole and Taxes Tax cutting is an issue only Republicans can lose...
...In short, she needed a miracle, and she got it: a 30 percent across-the-board tax cut proposal, crafted for her by economist Laurence Kudlow and Steve Forbes...
...Dole will have to show a similar discipline in getting the tax-cut word out to stand any chance of beating Clinton...
...It wasn't just Christie Whitman's tax cut proposal that won her the election, after all...
...Dole vs...
...What will happen this year...
...1. Please write your new address in the space provided...
...On September 16, for instance, the Cato Institute brought six Republican governors to Washington to explain how they cut taxes, slowed spending, and brought budgets into balance...
...Bill Bennett once compared Washington politics to football: either you are carrying the ball against your opponent or he is carrying the ball against you...
...George Bush came back from a 17-point deficit in 1988 on the strength of his pledge not to raise taxes...
...James Florio in early October 1993- James Carville, the Clinton guru who ran Florio's re-election campaign for the New Jersey governorship, was boasting that the election-in which his man had a 2o-point leadwould bury Reaganomics and tax cuts once and for all, and that Florio's triumph would prove that raising taxes early, and then distributing the revenue amongst allies, could make voters forget their anger enough to re-elect...
...and to require cost-benefit analysis for all new federal regulations...
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...The second check is for the same amount, except it's made out to the IRS...
...President Clinton may think voters would rather hear about school uniforms, adult literacy, and child smoking-and any number of peripheral issues he had no interest in when Democrats controlled Congress-but it's really a strategy to avoid talking about taxes...
...If, on November 5, voters ask themselves, "Do I want my taxes to go up or down...
...Her campaign team urged outside groups to highlight the tax issue, and she gained invaluable credibility when governors who had manufactured tax-cut successes of their own endorsed her...
...Many GOP congressional candidates have taken to distributing two "checks" to audiences they address...
...Box 655, Mt...
...She appeared soft on crime by supporting weaker penalties against convicted drunk drivers...
...repeal Bill Clinton's 1993 tax increase on Social Security payments...
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...to reform education by providing school choice to even the poorest Americans, and allow parents to establish "education investment accounts" with tax-free contributions of up to $500 for every child each year...
...and "Do I want the federal government to get larger or smaller...
...For Dole to cut taxes by $548 billion over the next six years, and bring the budget into balance by 2002, Congress only needs to find $217 billion in spending reduction out of $3.9 trillion-six cents out of every dollar Clinton is planning to spend in the next six years...
...I 2. Attach the mailing label from your most recent issue...
...In Michigan, John Engler has balanced his budget six years in a row while passing twenty-one separate tax cuts...
...Since the Democratic convention, Dole campaign chairman Donald Rumsfeld, economist John Taylor, and Stanford's Martin Anderson have been explaining the plan to House and Senate members, as well as every business and conservative group they can get on a conference call...
...She refused to release her income-tax records...
...3. Return this form to us at the address listed below...
...Actually, it was Christie Todd Whitman vs...
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...In 1984, Walter Mondale promised to raise taxesand disappeared under Reagan's secondterm landslide...
...Was Clinton ever asked how taxpayers would "pay" for his tax increases in 1993...
...That's all there is to it...
...On October 8, major taxpayer and business groups asked candidates to take or renew the Taxpayer Protection Pledge to oppose all efforts to raise income taxes...
...Newt Gingrich has an answer: he's been handing out plastic bags with six pennies in them...
...For the moment at least, Carville was having the best of it...
...Just a month later, Whitman defeated Florio by z6,ooo votes, and Republicans maintained control of the New Jersey assembly and senate for the first time in twenty-two years...
...Clinton...
...expand individual retirement accounts and establish a spousal IRA, and require by constitutional amendment a supermajority of Congress to raise taxes in the future...
...Democrats attack the Dole plan by asking how he intends to "pay" for the tax cuts over the next six years...
...When the press asked how she was doing, she'd reply, "We're on track to win" -and then go right back to the tax message...
...If the Clinton campaign or its big media auxiliaries convince voters to focus on a different question, or dozens of different questions, then Bill and Hillary Clinton will get another four years to play dodge-thesubpoena...
...First of all, the Dole plan promises to enact the balanced budget amendment that passed the House in 1995 but failed in the Senate by just one vote...
...Six pennies out of every dollar does not strike voters as unreasonable...
...The Dole campaign will have to emulate Whitman's strategy if it wants to win on November 5, and it almost has...
...In New York, George Pataki reduced state spending by $z billion, and cut income taxes 68 November r 99 6 • The American Spectator by 2o percent...
...GROVER G. NORQUIST is president of Americans for Tax Reform...
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...ban on assault weapons...
...After the incumbent Democrat championed a record tax increase that caused his party to lose both houses of the legislature and his approval ratings to plummet, the Republican challenger was down by twenty points one month before the November election...
...Mitch McConnell's auto choice insurance reform, a measure that would reduce insurance costs by an average of one-third across the nation...
...In 198o, Ronald Reagan's "Kemp-Roth" tax cut was more violently attacked than Dole's...
...slash the capital-gains tax in half...
...add a $500 per-child tax credit...
...The first, made out to "My Family," is for $1,272-the amount a family of four earning $30,000 annually would save each year under the Dole plan...
...Dole's proposal also vows to "end the IRS as we know it" by moving to a "simpler, flatter and fairer" tax code with a oneyear tax amnesty during the transition and an end to the "lifestyle audits" begun by Clinton...
...Whitman, the proudly self-styled "Rockefeller Republican," was in deep trouble, seemingly searching for the most politically viable position issue by issue...
...cut personal income tax rates by 15 percent...
...After Bush broke his word, of course, the governor from Arkansas who promised to cut middle-class taxes defeated the sitting president...
...then Bob Dole will win 60-40...
...GOP spokesmen defend the Dole plan by noting the tax and spending cuts initiated by Republican governors...
...It also pledges to balance the budget by fiscal year 2oo2...
...Morris, IL 61054-8084 1-800-524-3469 r The American Spectator • November r996 69...
Vol. 29 • November 1996 • No. 11
