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- THE U.S. CAMPAIGN, Page 28Here Come the Big Guns
-
-
- After the rhetorical rumbling in Houston, the G.O.P. readies
- a fierce assault on four policy fronts. Clinton prepares a
- counterattack, but may be vulnerable on some points
-
- By STANLEY W. CLOUD HOUSTON -- With reporting by Michael Duffy/
- Houston and Priscilla Painton and Walter Shapiro/Little Rock
-
-
- A George Bush operative told a group of reporters at the
- G.O.P. convention four years ago that "a presidential campaign
- is just like a war." The take-no-prisoners Bush juggernaut
- rolled out of New Orleans and three months later routed opponent
- Michael Dukakis. Fair warning to Bill Clinton: if you heard a
- faint rumble in the background at last week's Republican
- Convention, it was the sound of Bush's heavy artillery moving
- into place. Stand by for incoming.
-
- Despite Bush's adroit acceptance speech, his handlers know
- that to elevate Bush in the polls, they need to bring down
- Clinton -- and fast. With James Baker directing the campaign,
- Bush will now begin trying to flush Clinton out of his
- comfortable moderate's nest and portray his opponent as just
- another tax-and-spend liberal Democrat with neither the
- experience nor the ability to deal with the nation's problems.
- The Bush team is sure to run a fine-tooth comb over Clinton's
- 12-year record as what Republicans are calling "the failed
- Governor of a small Southern state." And they will revive
- questions about his Vietnam War draft status by claiming, as Pat
- Buchanan did last week, that Clinton lacks the moral authority
- to make military decisions.
-
- The Republicans won't stop there. Ironically, though
- Clinton has been praised for laying out a detailed economic
- plan, its very proposals provide some of the ammunition Bush
- needs for his late-summer assault on Little Rock. But the
- problem with these Republican bombshells is that while many of
- them are on target, the arguments tend to be aggressively
- hyperbolic and are occasionally contradicted by their own
- supporting documents. For one thing, the President faults
- Clinton for not favoring a balanced-budget amendment to the
- Constitution -- though it was the Reagan and Bush
- Administrations that are mainly responsible for the enormous
- amounts of red ink in the federal budget.
-
- Even as Republican speechmakers were taking aim at Clinton
- from the podium last week, aides were crisscrossing the sprawl
- of Houston to underscore their points over breakfast, lunch,
- coffee and cocktails with reporters. Meanwhile, Democratic fax
- machines were churning out rebuttals -- including a two-page
- reply to Bush's acceptance speech before he had even finished
- delivering it. As the volley of stats and cost estimates flying
- between both camps increases, the campaign is likely to be
- fought in four major policy arenas as well as on the "family
- values" front. The key lines of attack:
-
- SPENDING. Given the Democrats' belief in an activist
- government, Clinton is vulnerable on this front. Bush correctly
- charged in his Thursday night speech that the Democrats' budget
- proposals would add $220 billion in federal spending, not
- counting the cost of Clinton's health-reform package. But that
- number is spread over four years, and it would go for
- potentially politically salable projects such as investing $80
- billion to rebuild America's infrastructure or helping to
- finance bridges, roads, an intercity rail system and a
- nationwide information network.
-
- But Clinton's vagueness on spending details gives Bush an
- opening to brand him an old-fashioned profligate liberal.
- "Governor Clinton and Congress know that you have caught on to
- their lingo," Bush said in his speech. "They know when they say
- `spending,' you say `uh, oh.' So now they have a new word:
- `investment.' They want to `invest' $220 billion more of your
- money -- but I want you to keep it."
-
- Nor is the Bush camp the only one to voice reservations
- about Clinton's economic plan. The bipartisan Committee for a
- Responsible Federal Budget has serious objections, especially
- about Clinton's claim to be able to halve the federal deficit
- over four years. "The numbers do not add up," says a committee
- report. Noting that Clinton's plan would over four years produce
- reductions of about $4 billion in the growth of such entitlement
- programs as Social Security and Medicare, the committee sees
- this as a very small drop in a very large bucket. By 1996, notes
- the group, "entitlement spending is projected to exceed $900
- billion!"
-
- TAXES. Speaker after speaker in Houston charged that
- Clinton has advocated the largest tax increase in history. But
- the Republicans themselves could not agree on the size of those
- tax hikes: the Bush Administration's Office of Management and
- Budget used the figure $220 billion, while Bush and other
- speakers, like Congressman Newt Gingrich, cited tax increases
- of $150 billion. The issue has tremendous political force,
- especially in a time of less than 2% annual economic growth. The
- Bush team has charged that Clinton's taxes would force many
- small businesses to close and cost many people their jobs.
- Moreover, says Jim Cicconi, issues director for the Bush-Quayle
- campaign, "the dirty little secret of this plan is that to raise
- the revenues they need on the tax side to pay for the programs
- they want, they have to drop the ((higher)) tax brackets into
- the middle class." But Clinton advisers suggest that the
- Arkansas Governor would sooner scale back some of his spending
- plans rather than extend his tax-hike proposals to middle-income
- AmeriStill, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget finds
- that the Clinton plan, by relying on higher corporate taxes and
- a new 36% tax rate for the wealthiest 2% of Americans (families
- earning more than $200,000 a year), is politically, as well as
- fiscally, unrealistic.
-
- But are the Republicans correct when they say this would
- be the greatest tax increase in history? No. In truth, the
- record tax hikes are all Republican products: the Reagan
- Administration's 1982 increase ($98 billion over four years) and
- the new taxes of 1990 for which Bush now apologizes ($107.6
- billion over four years). Clinton's plan would actually increase
- taxes about $92 billion over four years -- hardly trivial, but
- no blue-ribbon winner.
-
- So how do the Republicans pump the figure up to $150
- billion and beyond? By including as tax increases such items as
- Clinton's claim that he can raise $45 billion over four years
- by tightening IRS regulations for foreign companies operating
- in the U.S., and the $9 billion he projects from cracking down
- on tax fraud. These may be unrealistic projections, but they are
- not tax increases. Moreover, the Republicans' use of these
- figures is inconsistent bordering on hypocritical: on the one
- hand, they ridicule the notion that $45 billion could result
- from tougher IRS regulations on foreign companies, claiming that
- the real figure is closer to $1 billion; yet they include the
- full $45 billion among proposed Democratic tax increases.
-
- MILITARY CUTBACKS. The Bush people went to great lengths
- in Houston to portray Clinton as an irresponsible defense
- cutter who would slice right through the muscle and into the
- bone. In fact, there's not much difference between the two camps
- on this issue. Clinton calls for $100 billion in defense cuts
- over four years; Bush has proposed $60 billion -- a tiny
- distinction when both sides propose to spend more than $1.1
- trillion on the military over four years.
-
- Another major difference has to do with troop levels:
- Clinton wants a fighting force of 1.4 million by 1996; Bush aims
- for 1.6 million. It is hard to understand the logic behind the
- G.O.P.'s claim that the Clinton plan would cost the U.S. a
- million defense-industry jobs, especially since the Arkansas
- Governor wants to use the military savings to help convert
- defense companies into high-technology industries. Clinton's
- internal projection of a loss of 300,000 jobs in five years is
- probably much closer to the mark.
-
- HEALTH CARE. Clinton has played into the Republicans'
- hands by overselling his vague health-care proposal, which
- promises that "affordable, quality health care will be a right,
- not a privilege." The Bush forces brand this as an invitation
- to "socialized medicine," or as the President put it in his
- speech in Houston, "a health-care system with the efficiency of
- the House Post Office and the compassion of the KGB."
-
- The Republicans incorrectly claim that Clinton supports a
- "pay or play" plan that would require companies to either
- provide their employees with private health-care insurance or
- pay a payroll tax for government-sponsored insurance. The
- G.O.P. estimates that a payroll tax of at least 7% would be
- necessary to cover all those who lack private insurance, and
- claims that such a plan would force many small businesses to
- close and cost 700,000 jobs.
-
- Though Clinton now veers skittishly away from pay or play,
- he is vulnerable to attacks on this point because his economic
- plan contains not so much as a word about the costs of his
- health-care proposals. Why? "At the time we announced the plan,"
- says Clinton issues aide Atul Gawande, "we didn't have every
- detail on the costs and savings ready. But we did want to
- establish the principle that we'd dedicate all the savings to
- expanded universal coverage."
-
- The vagueness of the Clinton proposal has allowed the
- G.O.P. to lump it together with various congressional plans that
- lack, according to Clinton aides, the kind of cost controls that
- Clinton himself would insist upon. But the Congressional Budget
- Office estimates that the Clinton health-care plan, such as it
- is, would require about $80 billion in new taxes. Clinton aides
- insist that there will be no payroll tax in their health
- proposal, which would be funded instead by direct government
- subsidies to cover those who are too poor to afford private
- health insurance. But they admit that despite their candidate's
- overheated rhetoric, they may have to introduce coverage very
- slowly.
-
- As the President attacks on these four policy fronts, he
- will also stress what Republicans call the risk factor, framing
- the debate along the partisan lines of whether voters should
- trust a relatively unknown Governor of a small Southern state
- with both the economic revitalization of the nation and the
- conduct of foreign affairs in a still dangerous world. The
- answer may determine whether Bush, whose standing in the polls
- bounced up to near competitive levels last week following his
- precipitous decline, can win in November. If he cannot, he will
- be the first elected Republican President to be denied a second
- term since Herbert Hoover lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932.
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