Dole Says GOP May Fight New Spending Cuts

WASHINGTON —  Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) warned Sunday that Republicans will not support a new round of federal spending cuts unless the White House and congressional Democrats agree to cancel some just-approved taxes, including a retroactive income tax boost on the wealthy.

“Don’t get us into this little game that, after the Democrats have raised everybody’s taxes, we ought to go in and cut the spending,” Dole said on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press.”

“They want to raise everybody’s taxes and then come back in October and say: ‘Now, we’ve raised your taxes, let the Republicans cut spending.’ That’s not going to happen. If we’re going to do that, we want to take a look at some of the tax increases too, and reduce some of them.”

To win passage of a $496-billion package of tax increases and spending reductions last week, President Clinton promised balking Democrats that he would seek additional spending cuts this fall. The pledge was crucial in getting the deficit-reduction measure through the House and Senate by hairline margins, as Republicans voted unanimously against the bill because of its tax increases.

Dole’s stern warning raised the specter of continuing partisan battles on the budget--and made it clear that Republicans are determined not to let Democrats escape the tax issue in next year’s congressional elections.

Although Republicans opposed all taxes in the deficit-reduction bill, they protested the loudest about a provision that would raise income taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of Americans, retroactive to Jan. 1 of this year.

But some Democrats are having indigestion over that provision as well, and on Sunday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who faces a reelection fight next year, urged that the retroactive part of the tax boost be done away with in exchange for a massive spending reduction in all government programs, including such entitlements as Medicare and Social Security.

“If we took a 3% (spending) cut across the board, that’s $13 billion. The (tax) retroactivity in this (deficit-reduction) package is $10 billion,” she said on ABC-TV’s “This Week With David Brinkley.”

“I’ve talked to Democrats who want to do it, and I talked to Republicans who want to do it. And I think we ought to try and do it if we can.”

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.), appearing with Feinstein, seconded the proposed trade-off.

Later on the ABC broadcast, however, Vice President Al Gore defended the tax increase, saying that “all of the hoopla and waving of arms about retroactivity is all in behalf of the wealthiest 1% of people in this country.”

He pledged to seek a bipartisan pact with Republicans on additional spending cuts. But he said he was “disappointed to hear Sen. Dole say this morning that if he has his way, Republicans will not support cuts in the fall.”

Feinstein said Clinton is going to have to “put together a bipartisan nucleus” if he expects to accomplish any of his future goals.

“If he can’t do it through the leadership, my very strong recommendation is that he do it through the non-leadership of both houses,” she said.

“There needs to be a working majority of Republicans and Democrats.”

Feinstein said she has been assured by White House Budget Director Leon E. Panetta that the Administration was serious about cutting federal spending.

She said Panetta told her that “in October the Administration plans to present the Congress with a bill” calling for canceling spending items that have already been appropriated.

“I am strongly of the belief that that bill should come,” she said.

“I think it will be a major failure if it does not--and in that bill, that there be at least a 3% cut across the board, if not more than that, for this fiscal year.”

Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), whose cliffhanger decision to support the deficit-reduction bill helped provide the winning margin in the Senate, said on “Meet the Press” that he hoped the next round of spending cuts would reduce cost-of-living increases by one or two percentage points for Social Security recipients.

Dole endorsed that idea but only if it applied to “upper-income recipients.”

However, House Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said on CNN’s “Newsmaker Sunday” that it would be “extremely politically difficult” for a majority from either party to vote to cut Social Security.

Foley said he thought some of the new savings would come from the recommendations of a Gore-led task force that is studying ways to streamline the government.

* RELATED BUDGET STORIES: A19, D1, D6