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.