Dole Predicts Smaller Tax Cut in GOP’s Final Balanced-Budget Bill

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole predicted Sunday that Congress will pass a budget bill with a tax cut that could be worth 23% less than the reduction sought by leading House Republicans.

Dole’s prediction underscored that, despite attention focused on President Clinton’s newly hatched proposal to balance the budget while also cutting taxes, the policy choices for now rest with congressional Republicans who have yet to reach agreement among themselves.

“We’ll work that out hopefully this week,” Dole said during a television appearance Sunday. “We’ll be in the process of putting the budget conference report together, the compromise. And we believe we can restrain spending and have a tax cut, a family tax credit, capital gains change, maybe some estate tax changes.”

Dole said he believes the total value of the tax cuts will ultimately be “somewhere between $230 billion and $260 billion.”

Those figures are 13% to 23% less than the $300-billion tax cut called for by some congressional Republicans, including House Majority Leader Dick Armey of Texas.

“He favors tax relief of about $300 billion,” said Armey’s spokesman, Ed Gillespie.

The Senate and House budget leaders are to continue negotiations this week on the variety and amounts of cuts in taxes and spending. Their results will be sent to Clinton to sign or veto.

Dole, the veteran senator from Kansas who is viewed as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination in 1996, said Clinton’s new budget proposal will not affect the package that will be passed by Congress.

“I think it’s too late in the present budget debate,” Dole said. “But at least the President is touching some of the hot buttons, like Medicare, that before he was beating up Republicans on. Now he’s saying . . . we have to restrain the growth of Medicare.”

According to Clinton, his budget proposal would “reform” Medicare without hurting beneficiaries. Clinton also has said that a major difference between his plan to balance the budget and those of the congressional Republicans is that he would cut taxes for the middle class but not the wealthy.

Dole, appearing Sunday morning on CBS, said that he envisions a family tax credit for households earning “much less” than the $200,000 per year originally proposed by the GOP. A difference between Clinton and the Republicans is that while the President says that his plan would balance the budget within 10 years, the Republicans say they would achieve balance in seven years.

House Minority Whip David E. Bonior (D-Mich.) said he is skeptical of both claims. “This whole idea of deciding where the budget’s going to be in 10 years from now is a little crazy to begin with,” he said on ABC. “I mean, who knows?”

Clinton angered many liberals last week by proposing to balance the budget through cuts in social spending. One of those displeased, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, said Sunday that the President’s movement away from the party’s left is causing him to once again consider seeking the presidency.