Word: dole
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...economic question about Bob Dole's tax-cut proposal, and campaign advisers are happy to give a political answer. For instance, Why did Dole make a 15% slash in individual income-tax rates the centerpiece of his economic program rather than feature a more complex, rival alternative? Because it's easier to explain to voters, says Michigan Republican Senator Spencer Abraham, who helped sell Dole on the idea. Whatever the economic merits of the other plan, "people would have to think about their adjusted gross income and payroll tax. The concept doesn't translate to everyone...
...getting people not to think might be helpful, particularly since some of Dole's numbers do not seem to add up. No matter, say campaign aides; he's running for President, not accountant in chief. Besides, adds Donald Rumsfeld, a senior policy adviser, the Republican nominee is not talking to economists: "The real audience here is the American people." Rumsfeld figures they are ripe for a debate on taxes. "As we saw with [Governors] Christie Whitman in New Jersey and John Engler in Michigan, it is a debate Republicans can win," he says...
...which points to the prime difficulty of offering an economic critique of the tax plan Dole finally unveiled last week: it is not really an economic program at all. The plan's true purpose is to bait enough voters with the promise of lower tax bills so as to overcome President Clinton's towering lead in the polls...
...that still possible? Dole's advisers talk up voters' lingering doubts about Clinton's credibility. But the Republican hopeful could be creating a credibility chasm of his own. His proposed tax cuts are so enormous--$551 billion over six years, according to the nonpartisan Joint Tax Committee--as to leave him wide open to charges that they will cause the federal deficit to balloon. And thanks in no small part to the decades-long preaching of a former Senator named Robert J. Dole, polls lately indicate the public prefers lower deficits to lower taxes. So, in fact, do Republican Convention...
...Dole insists he can balance the budget by 2002 through a combination of economic growth--to be spurred by the tax cuts--and sharp, though mostly unspecified, reductions in spending. Trust me, he is saying. He told the Chicago Chamber of Commerce, "I grew up a poor boy in Russell, Kansas. I know the importance of living within your means, and I know the consequences of not doing that. Deficit reduction is in my blood...