REP. EMERSON CRITICAL OF NEW TAX PLAN

Eighth District U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson said that President Clinton should not scale back but retreat completely from his plans for an energy tax.

"What we have here is another game of semantics," said Emerson. "The president and his advisers are trying to come up with another name instead of Btu to make his package fly. I don't care what letters or words they call it by; it still uses the same final three: T-A-X. As I have mentioned throughout this process, we should obtain deficit reduction through spending cuts first, not new taxes."

Emerson said that budget analysts have determined that the BTU tax first proposed by Clinton would raise the average American household's overall energy bill by about $500 annually - raising $72 billion in federal revenue over five years.

"The new administration just doesn't get it. A broad based energy tax hurts consumers, agriculture, business and industry and America's competitive edge," said Emerson. "The right thing for them to do for our country and our people is to scrap the energy tax idea altogether."