Bush ‘Open’ to $60-Billion Tax Cut in 2001

President Bush on Friday signaled support for a plan to accelerate the effect of his 10-year, $1.6-trillion tax cut proposal with a $60-billion reduction this year.

Bush also suggested that he had not ruled out the possibility of having a “trigger mechanism” to rein in future tax cuts if the anticipated $5.6-trillion federal budget surplus does not materialize over the next decade.

“There’s a lot of ideas now being floated out in the Congress, and I’m open-minded to any good idea,” Bush said. When asked whether a trigger mechanism therefore was not out of the question, he responded: “Any suggestion that people give, I’m willing to listen to.”

But in brief public comments, Bush insisted he would not accept a provision that would undo the tax cut if Congress spends too much.

“I won’t support a measure that says to Congress: Spend all the money you want and, therefore, diminish the tax relief plan that we’ve gotten passed for the people,” Bush said.

Still, with the economy slumping, the president added: “I think we can accelerate tax relief, we should accelerate tax relief and keep the size of the [total] package at the same level.”

Bush spoke in response to a proposal put forward Thursday by Senate Republicans. With an anxious glance at what the president is calling a “sputtering” economy, they began pushing for a $60-billion cut this year.

“We are convinced . . . that this must be done as quickly as possible for the economy,” Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) said in unveiling the proposal.

Bush’s support for an immediate cut was not surprising; an aide to Domenici said the plan grew out of talks with Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill.

The details of the new wrinkle in the tax plan--and its political prospects--are uncertain.

The House has shown support for no more than a $6-billion advance on the tax cut this year. And Democrats in the evenly divided Senate, although looking with a kinder eye than in recent months at some sort of quick tax reduction, complain that the White House plan is skewed too heavily toward the wealthy.

Bush was in Maine to speak to a meeting of the Greater Portland Chamber of Commerce about his tax and budget plans. The trip was part of his campaign to put pressure on specific senators whose votes on the tax plan are both crucial and up for grabs.

His focus Friday was on Maine’s two moderate Republican senators, Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, both of whom flew here from Washington aboard Air Force One. So did one member of the state’s congressional delegation, Democratic Rep. Thomas H. Allen.

“It’s a twofer,” White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said. “He gets to invite them to travel back to their state, and he gets to make his case for his budget priorities.”

Snowe joked afterward: “The president convinced us of everything.”

Bush told reporters at a Salvation Army seniors’ center he visited here that “the key thing is to make sure that we have tax relief that’s meaningful, and to get as much money in the people’s pockets as quickly as possible to provide a stimulus package.”

Asked how the tax cut could be accelerated without exceeding its $1.6-trillion goal, the president said: “You could delay one aspect of the total tax-relief package for one year, for example. I mean, there are ways to get it done.”

Misstating the size of the Domenici proposal, Bush suggested that it would have little effect on the total cost of his 10-year reduction proposal. The senator, Bush said, “was talking about accelerating by about $40 billion. Well, that’s a rounding number when you’re talking in terms of trillions.”

On another matter, the president walked gingerly into the campaign finance debate that had consumed the Senate this week.

When asked whether he would veto any measure that would prohibit individuals from making unlimited, unregulated donations--known as soft money--and that did not include a provision giving labor union members the opportunity to block the use of their dues for contributions to individual candidates, Bush said: “I’m watching the debate very carefully.”

The president in the past has argued for such limits on union contributions, and he supports a ban on corporate and union soft-money contributions. But he would not ban individuals from making such political donations, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

When pressed, Bush said he believes that lawmakers will “come up with a reform that will meet the parameter that I’ve laid out that I can sign.”