Bush sends tax cut plan to Congress

Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2001 | 11:47 a.m.

SUN WIRE REPORTS

An outline of President Bush's 10-year plan for fiscal years 2001 to 2011.

$5.644 trillion.

$2.591 trillion.

$1.620 trillion.

$153 billion.

$417 billion.

$842 billion.

$2.017 trillion.

WASHINGTON -- President Bush sent Congress a $1.96 trillion budget today that would curtail spending in programs ranging from farm aid to transportation, while using ballooning surpluses to provide Americans with a $1.6 trillion tax cut over 10 years.

Bush, who embarked on a two-day road trip to promote his program, declared in Beaver, Pa., that his budget plan was responsible, a matter of fairness and a battle to brake runaway government spending.

"The surplus is your money, it's not the government's money," he said, earning cheers.

Bush said in his 207-page budget plan, called "A Blueprint for New Beginnings," that the proposal would create a federal government "that is both active to promote opportunity and limited to preserve freedom." The budget provides "reasonable spending increases to meet needs while slowing the recent explosive growth that could threaten future prosperity," he said.

But Democrats complained that his $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax cut was too generous to the wealthy, saying $750 billion in tax relief weighted to lower-income Americans would be more responsible. They also pledged that during the upcoming congressional battle, they would protect various programs Bush is trying to trim.

"All of the democratic principles he espoused, we support. It just doesn't fit into a budget process," said Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., the House Ways and Means Committee's top Democrat.

Democrats contended GOP leaders were trying to ram Bush's massive tax cut through Congress, scheduling a Ways and Means vote on Thursday. "Something with such consequence should not be delivered in such haste," said Rep. John Spratt, D-S.C., the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

But House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. predicted Bush's across-the-board tax cuts would clear Ways and Means this week and be debated by the full House next week.

The speech reflected both Bush's campaign and his record as governor of Texas, but it was more narrowly focused than most presidents have chosen to be in their first nationally televised address to Congress.

Bush did not go quite as far as Gerald Ford, who said, "I have no legislative shopping list here this evening," when he addressed Congress just three days after Richard Nixon resigned. Yet neither did he offer the sort of vast legislative agendas that Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George Bush and Bill Clinton all presented to the Congress and the nation in their first speeches.

For this President Bush, a more focused approach is a familiar strategy. As Calvin C. Jillson, chairman of the political science department at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, said this week, "In each (Texas) legislative session he identified one or two signature issues."