What Consensus?

Virginia Democrat Harry F. Byrd, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and longtime foe of budget deficits, pushed a bulging manila folder toward a visitor. "Now here are the letters about the tax cut from just one mail," said Byrd. "There are 60 of them there, and not one that's for it."

In other offices on Capitol Hill, the mail told the same story. California's Republican Senator Thomas Kuchel has received five letters favoring President Kennedy's tax program out of 2,000 letters about it. Minnesota's Democratic Senator Hubert H. Humphrey has received 700 letters about taxes so far this session--and only one of them clearly approved of the President's proposals. Humphrey staffers talk jokingly of framing that lone letter on the Senator's office wall.

Shot-At Target. Citizens presenting their opinions to congressional committees are also lopsidedly hostile. Organizations as diverse as the National Association of Manufacturers and the A.F.L.-C.I.O. have sent the Joint Economic Committee statements attacking the Administration proposals. In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee last week, one witness after another blasted one or another aspect of the tax package. Most shot-at target: the proposal to allow itemized deductions only to the extent that they exceed 5% of the taxpayer's adjusted gross income. An official of the National Association of Real Estate Boards testified that this revision would damage the homebuilding industry. Businessmen defended the present arrangements on stock options as a valuable incentive for executives. Spokesmen for pensioners argued against Kennedy's proposal to eliminate the provision excluding part of retirement income from taxation.

Despite all the hostility, the President predicted at his press conference that "we are going to get the tax cut." Although there are differences of opinion about details, he said, "there is a consensus that there should be a tax cut." In a speech before Wall Street security analysts, Presidential Economic Adviser Walter W. Heller made the same point, spoke of the "remarkable consensus which developed in 1962 on the economy's need for a federal tax cut."

There was indeed at one recent time a consensus favoring a tax cut, but, judging by reactions registered on Capitol Hill, it has been drowned by waves of antagonism--stirred up largely by the Administration. The President has sent to Congress a lardy budget showing a deficit of $11.9 billion, thereby repelling members of Congress and plain citizens who are reluctant to see the deficit enlarged by tax reduction. The President's tax package itself has alienated a lot of potential support because it is flawed by political bias, provides relatively little net relief for middle-income taxpayers. As for the U.S. business community, it is getting bullish about the future whether there is a tax cut or not (see U.S. BUSINESS).

White House Warnings. Having sabotaged the prospects of its own tax program, the Administration is now using scare tactics to help it along. Word keeps drifting out of the White House that if Congress does not cut taxes the alternative will be a massive increase in spending to gas up the economy. The President has taken to issuing warnings that tax reduction is needed to stave off a recession. In a speech this week to the American Bankers Association, he warned that a recession looms ahead unless Congress reduces taxes. At his press conference he said that "those who oppose" a tax cut "would have to take the responsibility for any deterioration in the economy."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.