Promises, Promises: Clinton Team Already Sees A Need to Adjust Pledges

• Published in: The Wall Street journal Asia
• Main Author: By David Wessel and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Victoria, Hong Kong Dow Jones & Company Inc 20.11.1992
• Subjects: Budget deficits; Gasoline taxes; Interest rates; Middle class; Presidents; Tax credits; Tax cuts; Tax increases; Tax rates
• ISSN: 0377-9920

During the campaign, Mr. Clinton promised not only to shield the middle class from tax increases but to cut their taxes. He promised to halve the deficit in four years. He said his rivals -- not he -- were the ones who would slash government benefits that go to the middle class. The president-elect's new economic transition team, headed by Harvard Prof. Robert Reich, is drafting lists of spending cuts and tax increases -- euphemistically described as "loophole closers" -- that go well beyond those in the economic plan set forth during the Clinton campaign. One juicy target for new taxes: U.S. corporations. A potential source of big spending cuts: the costly, fast-growing "entitlement" programs, many of which shower benefits on the middle-class people Mr. Clinton promised to protect. Such moves would be painful and politically difficult no matter what, but they would take Mr. Clinton a long way toward his stated deficit-reduction goal -- provided he doesn't simultaneously have to find a way to finance the middle-class tax cut that he also promised. Many budget analysts say that cutting taxes on the middle class would probably push his deficit target beyond reach.