Clinton, Dole Trade Charges on Tax Hikes

“He did it,” insisted Preisdent Clinton’s campaign staff. “No, he did it,” retorted the spin doctors for Republican Bob Dole.

Both campaigns spent much of Monday trading accusations about which presidential candidate, Clinton or Dole, has a record marked by support of tax increases.

Dole has repeatedly accused the President of responsibility for the nation’s most substantial tax increase, referring to the administration economic plan signed into law in 1993.

At a news conference Monday, Clinton campaign official Ann Lewis held up a black binder labeled, “Bob Dole’s 450 Tax and Fee Hikes,” containing explanations, charts, fact sheets and newspaper clips about taxes and fees Dole voted for that eventually became law during his 35 years in Congress. Undeterred, Christina Martin of the Dole campaign responded: “Bill Clinton likes his tax increases like his McDonald’s meals . . . super-sized.”

Lewis, though, had another point to make. “It was 14 years ago today that Bob Dole voted for the Tax and Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, which is without a doubt the largest tax increase in peacetime history,” she said at her news conference. “And not only did Bob Dole vote for the bill, he also wrote it.”

Adjusted for inflation, that tax increase during the Reagan administration is larger than the ’93 hike.

There was a limit, however, to how far the Clinton campaign was willing to press the issue.

Lewis was asked how Vice President Al Gore, a former U.S. representative and senator, had voted on many of the tax and fee increases she had chided Dole for supporting. “We are not saying these were good or bad votes,” she said. “We are not saying they are right or wrong. We are correcting Bob Dole’s rhetoric.”