Dole Plans Key Role for Military in Drug War

Once again criticizing President Clinton for an increase in drug use among teens, Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole renewed his pledge Sunday to expand the National Guard’s role in fighting illegal narcotics.

“If I am elected president of the United States, America will once again set about the business of winning the war on drugs,” Dole told the annual convention of the National Guard Assn. “I will get the Guard back where it belongs--in the forefront.”

Dole’s plan revolves around using existing military capabilities to combat the illegal influx of banned drugs and calls for the National Guard to act on its own or provide equipment or training to local and state authorities.

The plan would increase the National Guard budget to $230 million from the current $153 million.

Dole would also use the National Guard to assist in drug interdiction efforts at U.S. borders, particularly in California and the Southwest.

As part of this plan, he would also call for expansion of the so-called San Ysidro fence, a system of barricades and obstacles to deter illegal immigrants and drug smugglers in the Southern California border city for which it is named.

He also said that if his own get-tough measures didn’t work, he would consider making the U.S. military the lead agent in stopping drugs from coming across American borders.

In response, Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said Dole’s plan represented “a lot of good thinking, most of it we’re already doing.”

White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta said Sunday on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press” that the government already has National Guard units ready to assist local authorities.

And Clinton campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart charged that “Bob Dole is stuck in the old Washington way of either-or politics, choosing between interdiction and prevention as a solution to the drug war. It’s a false choice.”

In other political developments:

* In an interview taped Saturday and aired on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes,” Dole rejected suggestions that his tax-cut plan would lead to reductions in Medicare and Medicaid. “They’re not even on the table,” he said.

And he vowed not to raise taxes down the line if--as Democrats charge--his tax plan leads to a ballooning of the federal budget deficit. To any plan to raise taxes, Dole said, “I’ll say no. . . . Period.”

* Clinton, described by his aides as “dog-tired” after sandwiching the Democratic convention between days of politicking by train and bus, relaxed in Little Rock, Ark.

In the morning, he attended services at the Immanuel Baptist Church, where he has been a member since 1980. He was accompanied by Dick Kelley, his stepfather.

After calling Arab and Western leaders to talk about the situation in Iraq, he played golf--despite intermittent afternoon showers.

In the evening, Clinton spoke at a downtown rally in front of the Old State House, the site where he announced his candidacy for the presidency in October 1991.

* Republican vice presidential candidate and former NFL quarterback Jack Kemp celebrated the first day of the league’s season by traveling to San Francisco, where he presided over the coin toss between the 49ers, a team for which his son Jeff, 37, once played, and the New Orleans Saints, who, Kemp predicted last week, would lose the game.

Saints head coach Jim Mora is a former college roommate and teammate, “so I want him to do well, but I gotta root for the 49ers, at least until I get to New Orleans,” he said on his way into the stadium. The 49ers won the game, 27-11.

Halfway through the game, Kemp headed to Montana for a tax forum and an evening fund-raiser.

At the forum, Kemp pushed the edge of the envelope of Dole’s economic plan, which calls for a “substantial reduction” in the inheritance tax.

Dole “wants you to be able to leave your farm to your children without having the government confiscate it in Washington, D.C.,” Kemp told the audience. “We ought to eliminate the estate tax.”

Wayne Berman, Kemp’s campaign director for vice-presidential operations, said later that Dole has called the elimination of inheritance or estate taxes “a goal.”