
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, December 17, 1994                   TAG: 9412190071
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

CLINTON MUSTERS TAX FORCES

The Clinton administration Friday tried to claim the high ground of the tax-cutting debate, describing its proposal as fiscally responsible and aimed at the middle class. Republican plans, it said, are fiscally irresponsible and aimed at the richest Americans.

The White House rolled out Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, Education Secretary Richard Riley, Labor Secretary Robert Reich and other administration figures to make the case for Clinton as a committed tax-cutter on the day after the president's Oval Office address outlining his entry into the tax-cutting competition.

Bentsen said Clinton's proposals for a $500 child tax credit; for expanded individual retirement accounts that could be used for education, medical and other costs; and for tax deductions for $10,000 in post-high school tuition ``are first and foremost paid for'' and that GOP plans threaten to increase the deficit or are wrapped in phony bookkeeping.

``We're talking about how it's paid for; they aren't,'' Reich said. ``We've come too far in cutting the budget deficit to let the next Congress turn back and start cooking the books,'' Bentsen said of the Republicans who have launched the tax competition with a series of proposals far more generous and more extensive than White House plans.

``The president's middle-class `Bill of Rights' is targeted towards the fundamental needs and concerns of middle-income working families,'' White House Chief of Staff Leon Panetta declared. ``This is about the American dream.''

Most Republicans scoffed that Clinton's dream is more about getting re-elected than helping the middle class. Clinton's conversion to tax cuts, National Republican Committee Chairman Haley Barbour said, is as ``striking as Saul on the Road to Damascus.'' Democrats, Barbour added, ``are trying to get on the tax-cut train way after it's left the station ... but if they want to get on, let them get on.''

Incoming Republican whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said what the president presented ``is not bold enough.''

But incoming House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., welcomed Clinton's plan to give the middle class a package of tax breaks. In an interview on PBS' "MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour," Gingrich refused to criticize or endorse any specifics of the plan, saying he did not want ``to jump into nitpicking the president's ideas.''

``The president is moving in the right direction and I applaud that,'' Gingrich said. He called for an end to ``games of one-upmanship'' between Congress and the White House: ``Why don't we just work together to get things done? ... I don't think the country cares who is scoring points off who.''

by CNB