Four days before the State of the Union address, the Senate’s top Democrat on Friday mounted a fresh attack on President Bush’s tax-cut plan and offered an alternative that he said would give the sluggish economy a quick boost.
Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) proposed giving working families tax rebates of up to $1,200, extending benefits to the unemployed, giving businesses new tax breaks, and pumping $40 billion to financially distressed cities and states.
With Republicans controlling Congress, Daschle’s $112 billion proposal was essentially a manifesto of opposition that has almost no chance of becoming law.
But Daschle staked out a negotiating position for his party as the Senate readies for a free-wheeling debate likely to substantially alter Bush’s $674 billion proposal to abolish taxes on stock dividends and accelerate to 2003 income tax cuts slated for later in the decade.
Key Senate centrists in both major parties have been lukewarm on the Bush plan and are seeking to rewrite large portions of it.
Daschle, in a speech in Cleveland, sought to stoke rebellion with a tax-cut plan he said was aimed at average Americans instead of the wealthier ones.
“Economists tell us that the wealthy are far less likely to spend a tax cut than middle-income families,” he said. “In an atmosphere of economic weakness and tight budgets, should we be giving scarce dollars to the people who can afford to put them under the mattress?”
Daschle’s plan would be in effect only for one year. It would give all adult workers and their spouses a $300 tax rebate, plus $300 per child for up to two children. That would provide a $1,200 check to a family of four.
The White House sought to isolate Daschle’s plan from the views of other Democrats.
“I think it’s impossible to tell what Democrat alternative or alternatives will emerge because there are so many of them,” press secretary Ari Fleischer said. “There’s a lot of divisions from the Democrats.”
