Give Numbers, Name Names on Tax Cuts

GOP front-runner George W. Bush reportedly will announce a tax plan within the next few weeks. It is said that the plan will include some reduction in tax rates, phasing-out of the estate tax and other staples of Republican tax policy. It will, no doubt, be praised by the usual people who have never seen a tax cut they didn't like.

The real question is whether the Bush plan is going to attract any voters to him that he isn't going to get anyway.

As someone who has been pushing tax cuts since the 1970s, I certainly applaud any political candidate's support for an issue I hold dear. Yet I cannot deny that those who think like me represent a declining fraction of the electorate.

Back in the tax revolt days of Proposition 13 in California, voters seemed to want their taxes cut to the exclusion of everything else. Today, that simply isn't the case.

Indeed, even among the wealthy, who now pay a majority of all federal income taxes, tax-cutting appears to be a low priority. This is a puzzle because federal taxes as a share of the gross domestic product are the highest in U.S. history, 21.9% of GDP.

Despite this fact, however, poll after poll shows that tax cuts rank well below debt reduction, saving Social Security, improving education and strengthening Medicare among voters' priorities.

High taxes still are the main concern of a significant number of Americans, but they seldom rise above third or fourth on the list of priorities and are dwarfed by the combined percentage of those with other concerns.

President Clinton would have us believe that Americans have simply been won over to his vision of activist government and now reject the small-government philosophy of most Republicans.

Yet overwhelming percentages of Americans still believe that their taxes are too high, and specific tax cuts are very popular.

However, there is a deep distrust for politicians who promise tax cuts. One poll that stands out is from Fox News/Opinion Dynamics in March. Registered voters were asked if they believe politicians when they promise lower tax rates. A staggering 87% said no; only 9% said yes.

Another factor that stands out is hostility to "targeted" tax cuts. That word is equated in most voters' minds with: "Someone else will get their taxes cut, but not me."