The Candidates' Me-Too Ideas

Don't spend and spend, but cut, trim and hope for the best

George Bush advocates a $20 billion tax cut in 1981. Teddy Kennedy thinks a pump-priming cut may be necessary in 1980, but is not yet sure. John Connally wants a crowd-pleasing $50 billion to $100 billion tax reduction spread over three to five years, while Howard Baker figures a four-year time frame is about right. Both Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan would like lower taxes and a balanced budget (who wouldn't?), but want the cuts linked to a constitutional limit on the growth of federal spending.

The main challengers to Jimmy Carter are beginning to stake out positions on that premier fret of the American public: the economy. So far, they are producing no ideas that seem much different from or better than Carter's but only an array of me-too remedies that are eclectic yet oddly limited. The common thread that winds through nearly all is that Government can help the most by meddling the least. The new fashion for 1980 will not be spend and spend, elect and elect, but cut and trim and hope for the best. A preview of the leading challengers' economic plans:

Edward Kennedy: Though his advisers include Keynesian luminaries Walter Heller, Joseph Pechman and Arthur Okun, Kennedy is playing down his 17-year Senate record as a liberal Big Spender and emphasizing his economic "pragmatism." Last week Mobil's outspoken public affairs vice president, Herbert Schmertz, joined the Kennedy campaign staff as a top media adviser, even though Schmertz has repeatedly condemned the Senator's attacks on the oil industry. Kennedy supports the budget-paring efforts of Carter, but he fought this year to protect social spending programs from major cuts and co-sponsored legislation for such programs as federal funding for nurses' training and money for school lunches.

No one knows how much his proposed National Health Insurance plan would cost; estimates range from $28 billion to $45 billion a year. For many years he urged Robin Hood-style tax "reform" and a closing of capital gains benefits, but he has not lately repeated that theme.

Jerry Brown: The Democratic long shot no longer attacks businessmen as profit-grubbing plunderers of the environment, but he is having trouble fitting his "small is beautiful" philosophy to the realities of a $2.4 trillion economy. Brown convincingly argues that the nation's throw-away economy squanders scarce resources; yet he would vastly expand exploration of outer space even though the payoff is doubtful at best. He calls for a ban on new nuclear power plants and would give much more of a subsidy to solar power, though almost every study shows that over the next two decades solar can supply only a small fraction of the nation's energy needs, while nuclear power remains necessary. Most economists say that his call for a constitutional amendment to force a balanced budget would gravely crimp the Government's ability to function.

Ronald Reagan: The Republican front runner is trying to smooth the edges of his earlier right-wing stridency. His chief economic adviser: Martin Anderson, who was a member of Richard Nixon's White House staff. Like Brown, Reagan calls for a constitutional limit on unrestrained spending. He also urges an income tax cut, perhaps as much as 33%, arguing that the boost to business would quickly result in more productivity. That, in theory, would generate increased tax receipts and cut the budget deficit. Reagan advocates the indexing of income tax rates--that is, people would pay taxes on the real, not inflation-bloated, increases in their salaries. To hold federal spending low, he would shove federal welfare costs back onto the states, but he remains fuzzy on how the states would pay the bills without rocketing their own taxes.

John Connally: The business community's favorite candidate has put together the most comprehensive program. About a dozen right-leaning economists, including Charls Walker, Murray Weidenbaum and Albert Cox, are threshing out positions for him on everything from a value added tax (he sees merit in the idea but thinks it falls too harshly on those who earn the least) to a constitutional limit on spending (only "as a last resort"). Connally favors faster write-offs for capital investment, proposes large new jolts of defense spending and wants deep, budget-wide cuts in just about everything else, basically by allowing attrition to whittle the federal payroll. To increase trade he, along with Reagan and Brown, calls for a North American common market. To spur savings Connally would create a "taxpayer's nest egg," in which people could invest up to $10,000 of income, taxfree, so long as they put it in a bank account, stock or bond and reinvested the interest, dividend or capital gain.

George Bush: He borrows a little from each of his competitors. Much of his thinking was pulled together during briefings by Economists Arthur Burns, Paul McCracken, Herbert Stein and Paul MacAvoy at Bush's summer home in Kennebunkport, Me. He urges an energy effort as metaphorically grand as "the landing on the beaches of Normandy."

Yet he fails to outline a strategy for D-day beyond a vague "supply-oriented" program that features a watered-down windfall profits tax to finance drilling and synthetic fuels development. Bush calls for limits on federal spending but rules out a constitutional yoke. His $20 billion tax cut would be split fifty-fifty between business and individuals.

Howard Baker: His pursuit of the broad center has produced a six-point economic program that exudes moderation. He calls for a phased four-year schedule of tax cuts, of so far undetermined size. He pledges not to impose wage and price controls, promises to restrict the growth of the money supply, and vaguely calls for a two-year "moratorium" on the issuing of new regulations. He supports a constitutional amendment that would require a balanced budget unless a deficit is approved by two-thirds of Congress. To stimulate saving and investment, he would exempt from taxation at least some savings interest payments and would favor faster write-offs of plant and equipment.

If nothing else, the me-too familiarity of almost all the leading candidates shows just how intractable the nation's economic problems really are. So far, the challengers to Carter in Campaign 1980 have done little more than rehash the safe, the secure and the unexciting.

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