The proposal passed 282 95.63 In 1988, while seeking his party s presidential nomination, he attacked fellow Democrat Richard Gephardt for supporting what Gore sneeringly called the Reagan-Gephardt Tax Bill of 81. His proposal included additional taxes on Social Security. Small wonder Gore lost his presidential bid. In 1990, Gore actually proposed to increase the alternative minimum tax rate from 21 percent to 25 percent. As Gore has been quoted as saying, The Zebra can t change its spots.
Nobody has a crystal ball.
Clinton s budget plan asks Congress for substantial new money for scores of domestic programs popular with liberal and middle-class constituencies, from urban housing vouchers to classroom construction. The health of the American economy and overflowing Federal coffers allow Clinton to indulge in large new investments in politically popular labor, education, health care and environmental projects while cloaking himself in fiscal prudence by proposing to use budget surpluses to pay down the Federal debt.73 Clinton allowed Gore to announce many of the programs to seek votes from constituencies that would be funded in the new budget. Early in 1999, the Vice President released the names of the beneficiaries and the amounts they would receive at the rate of one or two a day, in order to milk the budget story.