The
outcome was a heavy defeat for the new
House
Democractic
leadership.
Ways and
means committee
chairman
Dan Rostenkowski
looked
particularly inept.
He took
a vacillating, off-again, on-again,
stand
and
eventually lost control of his committee.
Majority Leader
Richard
Gephardt,
failed to recognize the strength of the drive for
a
capital-gains
cut.
Finally, but too late, he helped draft the
Democratic alternative -
which
combined deductible
IRA
contributions
for everybody with an
increase
in the tax rate on people with incomes over
$200,000
.
The
capital
gains cut, he declared, was "designed to
keep
Leona
Helmsley's
dream
alive - that only little people pay taxes."
Republicans retorted, in
effect,
There you go again, proposing a tax
increase
.
"Fish
gotta
swim,
birds
gotta
fly, and
Democrats
gotta
raise
taxes" was the way one
G.O.P.
quip
put it.
