Wilson Hits the Mark Again With Tax Cut Plan

The Marine sharpshooter is back, carefully selecting and picking off easy political prey.

Last year, the Republican governor took aim at and captured the Democratic issue of class-size reduction. Two months ago, he neutralized child care as a welfare issue by showering it with more money than Democrats ever dreamed.

Last week, Gov. Pete Wilson hit the mark again by proposing a “middle-class tax cut” of up to $332 per couple. This shot was different than the previous two in that tax-cutting always has been a Republican, not a Democratic issue. Democrats had blocked past Wilson attempts to reduce the income tax.

But Senate Democratic leader Bill Lockyer let down his guard in mid-May by asserting that “the personal income tax should be on the [budget negotiating] table.” It was just a throwaway line uttered to make Democrats seem less villainous on tax cuts and, I suspect, to needle the governor. Instead, it goaded him.

Wilson waited for what he considered the right moment--when he had the undivided attention of Democratic budget negotiators, who were being pressured for a salary increase by a major party patron, the state employees’ union. The governor then unloaded with his $1-billion-per-year tax cut proposal, demanding its approval in trade for a civil service wage hike.

“We want tax relief for compensation increases,” he bluntly told reporters.

Irrelevant and unfair, many Democrats charged. The tax cut wouldn’t even take effect for two years. Most employees haven’t had a raise in three years. Also, the tax cut would rob schools.

The Democrats have a good point: The state treasury may be overflowing from a boom economy, but schools, parks, libraries, roads--you name it--still haven’t recovered from the recession. We should be reinvesting heavily in our children’s education and California’s deteriorating quality of life.

But Wilson also has a logical point: If not now, when?

*

“The more I looked at the [revenue] numbers, the more I became convinced this was the time,” Wilson told me. “If they’re not going to cut taxes now, they never will. . . .

“And it’s only fair if you’re going to give a salary increase to state workers to give some modest tax relief to the taxpayers who are paying their salaries. The Washington Democrats seem to understand that. I guess the ones in Sacramento are a whole lot more liberal. They seem to regard it as a sin to give anybody income tax relief.”

“They’re simply out of touch . . . with their own president, with their national party, on both welfare reform and middle-class tax cuts. I mean, how did Bill Clinton win reelection? He signed a welfare reform bill, which Sacramento Democrats hate and have resisted. He has been proposing what he calls middle-class tax cuts, because he knows not only are they popular, there is distinctly an element of justice. . . .”

“The problem is that without a tax cut, the Legislature can exercise real gluttony with respect to spending other people’s money.”

Ah yes, the old “tax and spend” liberals. We haven’t heard about them for awhile.

*

When I talked to Wilson late last week, he clearly was in a combative mood and digging in for a long summer siege.

Recalling the politically debilitating two-month budget stalemate of 1992, the governor commented: “You know, if I was willing to hold out when I was facing reelection [in two years], what in the world makes them think this is likely to be different.”

Wilson is barred by term limits from running again. He is a lame duck who, no doubt, believes this is his last good shot at an income tax cut to partially atone for a $7-billion, budget-balancing tax hike he was compelled to sign his first year in office.

There seems to be little trust between Wilson and Democrats, especially Lockyer. The governor thinks they deliberately have held up the budget as “a hostage for my agreement on some kind of inadequate welfare reform--and obviously that’s not going to happen. . . . They find [welfare reform] so distasteful philosophically, so repugnant they can’t deal with it.”

Democrats contend Wilson is positioning himself for another presidential race in 2000.

What’s his thinking about 2000? “My thinking is that it’s a long way away. A distant horizon. Would I like to [run]? Sure I’d like to. Does that mean I will? Hell no. You have to be realistic.”

That doesn’t mean he won’t run, Wilson added, only that he won’t run merely because he’d like to.

As for now, Wilson is in good position for budget bargaining. And he’s already a winner on taxes. When front page headlines all over the state proclaim any governor a tax-cutter, he has fired a bull’s-eye.