Broad-Based Energy Tax Under Study : Economy: Bentsen says action would help cut deficit, aid conservation. He adds that with a gasoline tax, ‘you also end up with some inequities.’

The Clinton Administration is considering a broad-based energy tax to reduce the federal deficit and to conserve energy, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen said Sunday.

Bentsen also said that, despite his past support for a gasoline tax, the new Administration has not yet decided on that option.

“When you do a gasoline tax, you also end up with some inequities insofar as different regions of the country,” he said, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Many believe the economy would benefit from so-called consumption taxes that make it costly for the nation to consume more than it produces, he said.

“I think that the general consensus among most economists is that we’ll be moving more in that direction in the future,” he said. Many experts believe that it might be difficult to get Congress to pass such a tax.

A broad-based energy tax “raises revenue (and) helps lead to some environmental objectives that we are trying to bring about by conservation of the use of energy,” he said.

“At the present time, we’re importing almost a billion dollars a week of oil, and that certainly adds to our trade deficit. . . .”

Compared to specific taxes--such as those on gasoline and oil imports, for example--broader forms of energy taxes could mean taxing all forms of energy, either by levying a sales tax or by taxing the heat content of each fuel, measured in British thermal units.

Bentsen did not specify what approaches the Administration is contemplating.

Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), Bentsen’s successor as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, appeared on the same television program. He agreed that an energy tax is likely.

“It’s a rough one to say, coming from Buffalo and Syracuse and so forth where it gets cold, but an energy tax is in order” even if it increases fuel oil prices, Moynihan said. “Specifically, a gasoline tax is . . . too much for the states where people drive 60 miles to work. . .

American Petroleum Institute President Charles J. DiBona, the major oil companies’ top Washington lobbyist, told the Washington Post that a broad-based energy tax would do more harm than good and predicted that such a plan would meet strong political opposition. The tax increase would not cause people to reduce energy consumption much, but it would hurt U.S. exports by raising the cost of goods produced in the United States, he said.

The Treasury secretary suggested in the television interview that a national sales tax would not be considered as another way to cut the deficit.

“I don’t see that at this point as something that will be done,” he said.

But he said that higher excise taxes on beer and tobacco are “on the table.”

Bentsen said that higher deficit numbers will make it “much harder” to have a middle-class income tax cut, which was one of President Clinton’s major campaign promises.

“Some tough choices will have to be made that haven’t been faced up to in the past,” Bentsen said.

The Treasury secretary acknowledged his earlier support for a middle-income tax cut but said “that was early in the spring. . . . The numbers have changed, the deficit increased, so it would be much harder to do that now.”

Moynihan agreed, saying that the Finance Committee “will be supportive of the President,” even if he backs away from his pledge to cut income taxes for the middle class. “We ought to be (supportive) anyway. He’s our President. We only have one at a time.”

The Clinton Administration package of economic proposals, expected to be unveiled next month, will aim for “a fair balance between cuts and expenditures (as well as) an increase in revenues (but) it will not be dominated by an increase in revenues,” Bentsen said.

Bentsen said Clinton would propose an increase in the personal income tax rate for people earning over $200,000.

The Treasury secretary said that unemployment of 7.3% still requires some stimulus to the economy, but, “I think whatever stimulus might be put in will not be of the magnitude that was originally projected.”

Bentsen said he believes that “the American public is ready for what it takes to get away from this deficit financing, to get our economy moving again, to encourage savings for investment and the creation of jobs.”

He said that he thinks the American people are prepared to make sacrifices “as long as they think those sacrifices are equally shared and the investment is in our future for the increase in the standard of living of our people.”