Senate debate on tax cuts puts Voinovich in spotlight

Ohio Sen. George V. Voinovich wears his "deficit hawk" label as a badge of honor, which it is. But the label also is a badge of courage for this first term member of Congress whose realistic view of all things fiscal comes from his experiences as mayor of Cleveland and governor of Ohio. Deficits are not part of local and state government vocabularies, which is why Voinovich goes apoplectic when his Republican colleagues tell him that red ink in the federal budget is nothing to worry about.
As a result of the hard-line position taken by him and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, the Senate is now debating a bill that calls for $350 billion in tax cuts through 2013 -- not the $720 billion sought by President Bush and not the $550 billion tax-cut package passed last week by the House of Representatives.
Despite intense political pressure from the White House -- the president even visited Ohio in an effort to get Voinovich to fall into line -- and from extremist Republican organizations, such as the Club for Growth, the two senators have stuck to their guns.
We urge them not to cave in now. Rising deficits do matter. According to the Associated Press, they're on track to near $300 billion this year, a record in raw dollars although not as a percentage of the overall economy. The deficits are especially troubling because they're the result of assumptions about the president's economic stimulus package that can't be supported with real numbers.
Loss of jobs
The administration says large tax cuts will create 1 million jobs by the end of 2004. Yet, in the first two round of cuts in 2001 and 2002, rather than jobs being created, hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost. Over the weekend, the White House sent Treasury Secretary John Snow to the Sunday television talk shows to make the case that there is no similarity between then and now and that the tax-cut package proposed by Bush will give the economy a much-needed shot in the arm.
But as Voinovich has consistently argued, burdening our children and grandchildren with huge bills is not only unfair, it's fiscally irresponsible.
By refusing to bend, he and his colleague, Olympia Snowe, forced the Senate Republican leadership to develop a tax-relief package that added no more than $350 billion to the deficit. The bill now being debated in the Senate was reported out of the finance committee last week.
"I hope we can now move ahead quickly to put this stimulus plan to work in Ohio and across the country to create needed jobs, grow the economy, and bring relief to families and businesses," Voinovich said after the committee vote. His statement makes clear that he does embrace the president's view that tax cuts are needed to stimulate the anemic economy, but does not believe in going overboard.
We have no doubt that the Ohio senator will stand firm -- and won't give in to empty promises or be swayed by economic assumptions that can easily be challenged.
Because of the differences in the Senate and House versions, a conference committee will have to find a compromise.