Word: across-the-board
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...started snapping into focus, so has Bush's message. Fading fast is the once-dominant sales pitch about his plan being the road to economic recovery. (Bush will find the argument handier as he pushes for speedy part-by-part passage, starting with the nonnegotiable - according to Bush - across-the-board cuts, because it remains a convenient way to woo crossover Democrats.) But the emphasis is clearly back on passing a cut for that classic Republican reason: "Giving the people their money back...
...their own. They'll dump the "targeted" tax cuts Gore pushed during the campaign, which "were a mistake," says California representative Ellen Tauscher, new vice chair of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. "It looked like Big Government picking winners and losers." Instead, the Democrats will offer across-the-board cuts - but no more than $900 billion of them - with the cuts weighted toward lower-income taxpayers. To sweeten the deal, Daschle and Gephardt may also propose trimming payroll taxes, the money taken from paychecks to fund Social Security and Medicare, a bigger hit than income taxes for 80 percent...
...Trent Lott and Denny Hastert's placard, meanwhile, said "Tax Relief for Everyone," and the pair leaned heavily on Bush's "the average working family gets $1,600" pitch. The plan, of course, has something for every conservative Republican - across-the-board cuts for the tax-code ideologues, marriage-penalty reductions and per-child and charitable expansions for the social conservatives - and Hastert and Lott seem quite content to pass the thing...
Bush aides were calling it a dream first week--even before Thursday, when Bush's big across-the-board tax cut got a huge boost from Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. The Fed chief, who was the first village elder Bush went to see on his initial trip to Washington as President-elect, put forward last week the mind-bending idea that it was actually possible to pay off the national debt too fast. He told Congress that some sort of tax cut might do "noticeable good" if the economy keeps heading south...
...under the plan - and some actual working families, one for each of the three lowest brackets, Bush hit all the GOP campaign themes. "Everybody who pays taxes will get some relief." "No American should pay more than a third of his income to the federal government." And the across-the-board point again: "I think it's important to cut all tax rates...