Senate Kills Bid to Raise Taxes, 63-35

The Republican-controlled Senate today rejected 63 to 35 a Democratic bid to restore billions of dollars in proposed domestic spending cuts and raise taxes by $72 billion over three years to reduce federal deficits.

“There are no scapegoats and no free riders,” said Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.), arguing for a deficit-reduction plan that also would have delayed increases in Social Security cost-of-living benefits for six months, scaled back President Reagan’s defense buildup and frozen spending on many domestic programs.

“Corporate taxes today are an outrage,” added Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.), saying personal income tax rates would not rise under the proposal.

But GOP leader Bob Dole of Kansas said, “If we can do it without raising taxes we should,” as he urged Republicans to resist the Democratic formula for deficit reduction. Even so, Dole sounded less adamant in opposition to tax hikes than Reagan has been.

The proposal by Chiles and Sen. Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina was the first of two Democratic alternatives to the Reagan-backed GOP budget. The Republican proposal would eliminate more than a dozen federal programs as part of a plan to reduce spending by $295 billion over three years.

‘Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish’

Minority Leader Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia was the author of the second Democratic spending blueprint, which he described as an attempt to reverse the “penny-wise, pound-foolish” cuts contained in the GOP package. He said both Democratic plans would “provide more investments in our future, economic growth (and) a strong national defense.”

Chiles, ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, conceded in advance that both plans were bound to fail. But he said he hoped that they would lead to efforts to draft a bipartisan plan to cut deficits now running more than $200 billion a year.

Dole said he hoped that after failing in their bid to force higher taxes, Democrats would join Republicans and “cast a vote for America” on a deficit-reduction package that relied on spending cuts alone.

For his part, Dole continued working off the floor to revise the original GOP package, unpopular with many Republicans for its deep cuts in domestic programs.