FIREBAUGH PROPOSES TAX CUTS DURING NEWS CONFERENCE HERE

Congressional candidate Emily Firebaugh pledged during a news conference at a Cape Girardeau construction site Thursday to work for tax cuts for working families.

Construction workers briefly stopped hanging drywall in a strip mall taking shape at Themis and Silver Springs Road so Firebaugh could be heard by reporters.

The Farmington Democrat is seeking the 8th District congressional seat.

If elected, she said she would work to cut the inheritance and capital-gains taxes and provide a $500 per child tax credit for working families.

But Lloyd Smith, political director for independent candidate Jo Ann Emerson of Cape Girardeau, accused Firebaugh of trying to jump aboard Emerson's tax-cut bandwagon.

"Maybe the Firebaugh camp finally picked up the Team Emerson '96 campaign card this week at the SEMO District Fair," he quipped in a statement released late Thursday afternoon.

Emerson is seeking to succeed her husband, the late Republican congressman Bill Emerson. He died in June of lung cancer.

Smith said Jo Ann Emerson has campaigned all along for tax relief.

Smith said Emerson has called for cutting capital-gains taxes not only on small businesses and farms, but also on personal homes and other investments, and indexing it for inflation.

Earlier, at the news conference, Firebaugh talked about the burden of inheritance taxes.

Federal inheritance taxes claim 37 to 55 percent of estates worth more than $600,000, she said. The $600,000 exemption hasn't been adjusted for inflation since 1981.

In today's dollars, that means the exemption has lost nearly half its worth, she said.

Firebaugh said economists have indicated that more than 70 percent of businesses do not survive through the second generation; 87 percent don't make it through the third.

"These experts say that 90 percent of businesses fail because o the inheritance burden," she said.

"We need to readjust the exemption cap so hardworking Missourians don't have to pay high tax rates when the family farm or business is handed down," Firebaugh said.

She said she knows about inheritance-tax woes. Relatives had to sell the family farm because they couldn't pay the taxes, she said.

Firebaugh said the capital gains tax on farmers and small businesses needs to be cut. She said she didn't have a particular percentage in mind.

"Such a cut would raise the value of assets and provide for greater investment." Firebaugh said that would mean more jobs for the 8th District.

Firebaugh said she would push for a $500 per child tax credit for working families.

Studies have shown this tax cut proposal would save families $22 billion nationwide, she said.

For the average family of two children, she said, the credit would amount to the equivalent of one month's mortgage payment.

In Cape Girardeau County, she said, parents would receive nearly $7 million in tax credits in one year.

Firebaugh said the tax credit should be targeted for middle-class families and phased out for upper-income families.

"I believe we need to make these proposed tax cuts to allow working families to keep more of their hard-earned money," she said.

Cape Girardeau businessman Jim Roussell liked what he heard. Roussell owns Anchor Construction Group Inc. of Cape Girardeau, which is the contractor on the strip mall project.

"Starting and maintaining a small business is not easy job,:" he said.

Tax cuts would help both his business and his employees, he said.

Roussell said he backs Firebaugh because of her business experience.

A former newspaper publisher, Firebaugh owns and operates a timber business in Madison County.