2nd Perot Ad Calls for Hefty Tax Hikes : Campaign: Texan, in TV promotion, spells out his plan to eliminate the deficit. Targeted are levies on income, businesses, tobacco and gasoline.

Ross Perot told voters Friday night that “we have got to collect more taxes in this country” as he used a half-hour, televised campaign ad to outline his plan to eliminate the annual federal deficit.

The independent presidential candidate proposed higher income tax rates, fewer exemptions for the rich, higher business taxes, higher tobacco taxes and a five-year, 10-cent-per-gallon annual increase in the gasoline tax.

“This gasoline tax, let’s look at what it raises, $158 billion,” Perot said in defense of the controversial idea. “Come up with something else more painless that will give us that, we will drop it in a minute and go to that.”

Perot compared U.S. gasoline tax collections to the larger gasoline levies in several European countries. He made a similar comparison last week in a half-hour televised ad in which he described the nation’s economic problems.

“We have got to collect more taxes in this country and this is one fair place to get it,” he said.

Perot has spelled out his economic proposals in a recent book, “United We Stand,” but this was the first time he has done so on national television.

This year’s federal deficit is $340 billion, and Perot said his plan would produce a federal budget surplus in its sixth year. Surpluses would help reduce the outstanding $4-trillion public debt.

The Dallas billionaire plugged Friday’s ad several times during the presidential debate Thursday night. He spent $150,000 for the time on NBC.

Like the first program, Perot again used colorful charts and a pointer. But he limited the amount of homespun rhetoric for which he has become known.

In advance of the broadcast, he made a transcript and one minute of videotaped clippings available here.

Perot said his economic plan would save $754 billion over six years. He said he would reach that figure by cutting general spending $315 billion, cutting entitlement programs to save $268 billion and raising business taxes $49 billion and other taxes $293 billion.

Spending increases on infrastructure, aid to cities and research would cost $109 billion and tax decreases to spur business investment and other growth $62 billion.

Perot responded to critics who have said his program would harm the country by slowing economic recovery.

“As I have pledged, to use the terms of Vietnam, we will not destroy the village in an effort to save,” Perot said. “If common sense and the interest of the American people dictates slowing down, we will slow down. Just use your head. But the thing we can’t do, is do nothing.”

Perot also defended his plan to raise the tax on the Social Security benefits of recipients who make more than $25,000 a year as individuals or $32,000 a year as joint filers.

“Now this gets translated by the other two candidates that we are going to tax Social Security,” he said. “Or last night the President said we are going to cut it. No, all we are going to do instead of taxing it at 50%, we are going to tax up to 85% of the wealthiest.”

He said the increase will affect only 18% of retirees and raise $30 billion over six years.

The Citizens for Tax Justice, a coalition of labor and citizens groups, charged that Perot’s deficit-reduction program would “leave taxes on the rich alone while further socking it to average families.”

The group claimed that a typical family of four earning $43,000 annually would pay $850 more in new gasoline and tobacco excise taxes, or 2% of its income. These excise taxes would increase 4.1% for a family earning $14,000 annually, but go up only 0.3% for the richest 1%, who earn an average of $782,000 annually.

Since joining the race on Oct. 1, Perot has campaigned by participating in the debates and by buying television time for the half-hour ads and for a series of 60-second ads. He has no scheduled campaign appearances after Monday’s final debate.

On Saturday night, Perot has bought 60 minutes on ABC to repeat Friday’s program and show a half-hour biography. He spent $540,000 for the time.

In an excerpt of the biography released Friday, Perot discusses his Depression-era upbringing on the border of Texas and Arkansas, 150 miles east of Dallas.

Pictures of his father’s cotton brokerage and family are intermingled with Perot sitting in a softly lit office providing a narrative.

“Some of the happiest memories of my childhood are riding with him down to the farms, over the dirt roads, into these little houses where people lived very modestly, visiting with them in the off-season to keep their friendship,” he said in the excerpt.