Clinton, Lott Argue Tax-Cut Ideas

President Clinton and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott sharpened their rhetoric Saturday over competing tax-cut priorities that must be resolved as a part of a five-year balanced-budget agreement.

Delivering his weekly radio address from Copenhagen, Clinton said the GOP plan is “the wrong way to cut taxes” because it does not sufficiently reduce taxes for working families.

In the GOP response, Lott rejected the president’s characterizations, urging Clinton to “disavow this fanciful arithmetic.”

The high-level exchange came as congressional negotiators prepare to resume talks this week to address an array of differences over tax cuts and spending policies.

Although Clinton and congressional leaders earlier this year reached broad agreement on a balanced-budget plan, they left the details on how to achieve the goal to the House and Senate, which are dominated by Republicans. Since then, each chamber has enacted its own balanced-budget bill and now the differences must be resolved before the bill is passed on to the president for approval or veto.

At the center of the dispute between Clinton and congressional Republicans is how to cut taxes by the agreed-upon $85 billion over the next five years.

Clinton said Saturday that the GOP plan “fails to live up to the budget agreement” by providing insufficient tuition tax credits and other benefits that encourage higher education.

The president also charged that “tucked away” in the Republican bills are “time bomb tax cuts that risk exploding the deficit in the years to come.”

Both Clinton and Lott focused on the most divisive tax-cut issue of all: a $500-per-child tax credit.

The president rapped the GOP plan, saying it would deny the credit to “up to 4.8 million families” who earn less than $30,000 annually.

Lott disputed Clinton’s assertions, saying that “more than 75% of our tax relief goes to families making less than $75,000 a year.”

On the other hand, the Mississippi senator added, Clinton and his Democratic congressional allies would extend the tax credit to people who pay no income taxes.

“That’s not tax relief; that’s welfare, and welfare has no place in a taxpayers’ relief bill,” Lott said.

He also accused Clinton of harboring “far-fetched ideas” on how income should be calculated and who should get tax cuts.