WASHINGTON — President Bush plans to ask Congress on Tuesday to repeal the luxury tax on yachts that lawmakers enacted in late 1990 and may seek to end similar levies on private aircraft, automobiles, jewelry and furs, White House officials and lawmakers said Sunday.
The White House is expected to portray the move as a bid to help restore jobs. Yacht builders have reported that their sales have fallen off sharply since the tax was enacted, and manufacturers of luxury automobiles have voiced similar complaints.
The plan to seek repeal of the tax on yachts was confirmed by Samuel K. Skinner, the new White House chief of staff, during an appearance on ABC-TV's "This Week With David Brinkley," and by Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), on CBS-TV's "Face the Nation."
It was not immediately clear whether Bush also would go ahead with a request to roll back the taxes on the four other luxury items, but Dole suggested that the proposal might include private aircraft and said that Congress may add the remaining three as well.
The move to repeal the luxury tax is expected to be among a spate of new measures that Bush plans to propose in his State of the Union address Tuesday as part of an election-year package designed to gain the initiative on domestic issues.
Bush also is considered likely to propose a doubling of the current $33 million in federal spending to control tuberculosis and a new public housing initiative that would enable tenants to remove apartment managers who were found to be ineffective.
Disclosure of the likely proposals Sunday marked the latest in a string of calculated leaks by Administration officials designed to build suspense before the Tuesday speech, which the White House is touting as a turning point in the Bush campaign.
Skinner said that he hoped the speech would inspire new confidence that would help spur the economic recovery. ". . . That's (where) we're going to begin on our effort, Tuesday night, to make sure it happens," he told the television audience on Sunday.
The luxury tax--on yachts, automobiles, private aircraft, jewelry and furs--was pushed through by congressional Democrats as part of the autumn, 1990, budget accord between Congress and the White House and accepted reluctantly by Bush as a necessary price for the pact.
Although Democrats had intended the soak-the-rich levy as an "equity" measure, affected businesses claimed that it stunted sales of yachts, cars, private airplanes and other luxury goods, sparking plant shutdowns and layoffs.
