BENTSEN WILL TELL TALE ON MUCH OF CLINTON'S PRESIDENCY

Laura D'Andrea Tyson is hardly a household name for most Americans. This University of California-Berkeley economist is President-elect Clinton's pick to head the White House Council of Economic Advisers. If MIT graduate Dr. Tyson has her way, Americans will be paying significantly higher taxes.

As quoted in the Wall Street Journal, in defiance of recent history and of common sense, Dr. Tyson made an amazing statement about taxes. Here it is: "There is no relationship between the level of taxes a nation pays and its economic performance." She thinks the U.S. is scandalously undertaxed and suggests, once the recession is over, a tax hike of from $400 billion to $500 billion to fund new programs and "miraculously cure our deficit problem."

On the other side of the economic policy divide in the same Clinton administration is the Treasury Secretary-designate, Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen. Back in the late 1970s, Bentsen was one of the most influential Democratic leaders in promoting supply-side tax cuts in marginal tax rates. As chairman of the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress in 1978, '79 and '80, Bentsen teamed with fellow Senate Democrats Russell Long (Louisana) and Sam Nunn (Georgia) to push lower marginal tax rates as a solution to the unprecedented "stagflation" of that time.

Last weekend, attending a meeting of state legislators in Washington, D.C., I heard a provocative speech by leading supply-side economist Dr. Paul Craig Roberts. Roberts, who served in the Reagan Treasury Department during 1981-'82, is now a syndicated columnist. Roberts reminded his audience of Democratic support for supply-side tax-cutting policies that many have no doubt forgotten.

Senate Democrats Bentsen, Nunn and Long actually got tax cuts passed through both houses of Congress in 1980, but the bill died in the face of a veto threat by Jimmy Carter's White House. After the November election that year, savvy politicians Nunn, Long and Bentsen wanted to return in a late session of Congress and try again to pass tax cuts. What they didn't foresee was not only the election of Ronald Reagan, but the Republican takeover of the Senate, a takeover fuelled by Republican pledges to enact supply side tax cuts similar to those supported by Bentsen, Nunn and Long. Their opportunity passed.

Then in 1981, with a Reagan White House and the congressional GOP pushing a version of the famous Kemp-Roth bill to cut marginal tax rates, House Democrats offered a supply side tax cut quite similar to President Reagan's. This writer was working on Capitol Hill in those days, and I vividly remember the bidding war that got under way. Of these two tax-cutting bills, Dr. Roberts writes, "It was impossible to differentiate the two bills for the public until Reagan decided to index the personal income tax for inflation to prevent "bracket creep."

Which Lloyd Bentsen are we dealing with? The Bentsen of 1978-'80, who did so much to make supply-side tax-cutting repsectable? Or the vice presidential nominee Bentsen of the '88 campaign, spouting hoary partisan cliches about "trickle-down" economics?

Which way will President Clinton go? Will he catch the Republicans swimming in the river, sneak down to the stream bank, and snatch away the supply-side clothes that a foolish, believe-in-nothing George Bush abandoned? If he does if Clinton turns toward the policies his Treasury Secretary espoused in the late '70s he will be well on his way to being a two-term President. If he chooses the higher taxes Laura D'Andrea Tyson wants, he'll be crushed by any able Republican in 1996. It's that simple.