Republican VP candidate Cheney makes LV stop

Jeffrey Libby

Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2000 | 11:08 a.m.

Republican vice presidential contender Dick Cheney, continuing a campaign through Western swing states, told a group of 200 members of the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce this morning that the Republican ticket will take economic decision-making out of Washington and put it back in the hands of working Americans.

Cheney focused his criticisms of Democratic nominee Al Gore's platform on proposed tax relief, saying that four weeks from now Americans will make a decision that could affect the direction of the country for the next 30 years.

Cheney knocked Gore's proposed spending of the expected $4.6 trillion surplus as already $900 million over budget. Gore's proposals would expand or add more than 200 federal programs, Cheney said, calling the budget proposal "old-style" big bureaucracy.

Cheney addressed the Chamber members at the nongaming Alexis Park Resort and Spa at 8:30 a.m. A public rally followed.

Cheney criticized Gore's plan for tax relief as benefiting what "he calls the right people."

Tax relief would go to those homeowners with solar-panelled roofs or battery-powered cars under Gore's plan, Cheney said. And under the Democrat's proposal, people who send children to day care would get tax relief, but not those who enlist the help of family and friends, Cheney said.

"The bottom line is that they want to tell us how to live our lives," Cheney said.

"American people should get to decide for themselves. They shouldn't have to march to the tune of some drummer down in Washington," he said.

Cheney said he would work to reform both the marriage tax and the death tax.

The crowd applauded loudly when he called the death tax "fundamentally unfair." They applauded again when he said no taxpayer should pay more than one-third of their income to the federal government.

During the Chamber speech, Cheney did not mention the storage of nuclear waste from power plants across the country at Yucca Mountain, 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, but he did take issue with the Clinton administration's energy policy earlier.

Cheney addressed an enthusiastic crowd of about 750 during a 7:30 a.m. breakfast speech at the National Mining Association Expo at the Las Vegas Convention Center, saying that the Clinton administration has failed to step up and toe the mark for the mining and energy industry.

"They have no coherent energy policy," Cheney said to a cheering audience. After meeting with local media representatives for a brief roundtable, Cheney will head to the airport for a scheduled noon departure en route to an appearance at a high school in Albuquerque, N.M.

Cheney arrived in Las Vegas on Monday after spending the day campaigning in the Pacific Northwest.

Cheney's visit to Las Vegas doesn't mean Texas Gov. George W. Bush won't come to Nevada to campaign, Nevada GOP executive director Ryan Erwin said. But it does mean the GOP presidential hopeful's anticipated Las Vegas stop probably won't occur before the last two weeks of the campaign.

Gore has made two campaign visits to Las Vegas in his presidential bid, meeting with reporters to discuss local issues in his most recent stop here.

Bush's only Nevada stop so far was in June at Lake Tahoe, where he refused to take questions from local media representatives.

The Associated Press contributed to this story.