Republican Senator Questions Tax Cut Ahead of a War
     By Donna Smith
     Reuters

     Tuesday 11 March 2003

     A moderate Republican senator who holds a crucial swing vote for President Bush's $726 billion tax cut package on Tuesday questioned whether Congress should act on it before any potential war with Iraq.

     "I'm beginning to question whether we should wait until after the war with Iraq, evaluate the economy, evaluate our spending needs and priorities, and then decide whether or not an economic growth plan makes sense," Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told reporters.

     She is one of a group of moderate Senate Republicans and Democrats, worried about the impact of Bush's tax cut on long-term deficits, who are working to strike a compromise on its size.

     The group hopes to come up with a number on the tax cut before the Senate acts on a budget blueprint for fiscal 2004. The budget bill will set spending for the fiscal year beginning October 1 and determine the size of the tax cut that Bush and his Republican congressional allies say will give the lackluster U.S. economy a boost.

     With the Republicans controlling the Senate by just one vote, Bush will need the support of Republican moderates if he hopes to win passage of the tax cut.

     Maine's other Republican Senator, Olympia Snowe, has been leading the moderates' efforts to strike a compromise. She told reporters it was important to move ahead with an economic plan given the uncertainties facing the economy.

     She said she would like the economic package to include money for cash-strapped states and has raised questions about the size of Bush's tax cut.

     "We have to have a sense of proportion about what we can do now given all the other extenuating circumstances," Snowe told reporters.

     Bush's economic package, which calls for eliminating taxes on corporate dividends paid to investors and accelerating schedule income tax cuts, is being sharply criticized by Democrats who question whether it is wise to pursue large tax cuts when the nation is on the brink of war.

     A group of fiscally conservative Democrats in the House of Representatives on Tuesday said cutting taxes when the government was racking up record budget deficits would add trillions of dollars to the nation's debt.

     "These long term tax cuts, will result in the young men and women who are going to be fighting in the deserts of Iraq having to come back to this country some day and to pay the bills for the very war that they fought," Rep. Jim Turner, a Texas Democrat, told reporters. "We think that is wrong."

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