1993 should be the Year of the Taxpayer. But if the Senate can't muster enough courage to defeat President Clinton's $275-billion tax-increase plan, 1993 will be remembered simply as the Year of the Tax.

The good news is that the American people are catching on. Take a look at Los Angeles and Texas.

In L.A., voters elected Richard Riordan, who will be the first Republican in three decades to run the city. It was the latest proof that people of all parties and ethnic backgrounds are looking to Republican leadership to help solve our national and urban challenges, including job creation and fighting crime.

Meanwhile, in electing Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison to the U.S. Senate with an astounding 67% of the vote, the people of Texas have sent all of us in Washington--the President, Democrats and Republicans alike--an unmistakable message: cut spending first, and junk the Clinton tax agenda. Make 1993 the Year of the Taxpayer.

Worried Democrats are doing their best to put a happy face on the 2-1 Texas blowout and the stunning Riordan victory. But if President Clinton's narrow, 5-point election victory over President Bush was a message of "change," then the 34-point Texas win isn't just a message, it's a direct order to steer away from Clinton's taxes and toward spending cuts that his plan doesn't deliver.

Republicans simply can't support a bloated tax package that raises $6.35 in taxes and fees for every dollar in cuts during the next five years, socks taxpayers with $20 in taxes for every dollar cut in the first year and has already been silently taxing many Americans retroactively since Jan. 1.

The Year of the Taxpayer can be a reality if our Democratic colleagues join us in this mission. Just as Senate Republicans proposed a deficit-reduction plan in March to slash the deficit more than the President proposes \o7 without \f7 raising taxes, we will offer a common-sense alternative that will put the focus on real spending cuts: Drop all of the President's proposed "investments," which are nothing but new spending; pull the plug on the sinister "broad-based energy tax"; kill the rest of the Clinton tax increases--all of them; consider all of the President's spending cuts; limit the growth of non-Social Security entitlement programs and freeze most other government programs for at least one year.

Last week, I traveled to Kansas, California and five other states. Here's what the American people are telling us: