GOP'S TAX-CUT PLAN IS WOEFULLY UNDERWHELMING

Last week, Republican congressional leaders rolled out what they are touting as the largest tax-cut plan since the first Reagan tax bill of 1981. Over five years, chairman Bill Archer of the House Ways and Means Committee says, the GOP plan would cut taxes by $85 million.

Divide 85 by five and you get 17. That is, there will be $17 billion of tax cuts in each of the next five years in a $6 trillion American economy. Tax cuts of any size are welcome indeed, but pardon us if we're underwhelmed. If Republicans are to be worth their salt, they should be championing a far bolder program of tax cuts.

The key fact dictating the puny size of the tax cuts is that tax-writers are constrained by the budget deal agreed to earlier by President Clinton and the Republican Congress. The $85 billion proposal follows the outlines of that deal and includes a $500-per-child tax credit, roughly $35 billion in tax incentives for college-bound children and others, cuts in capital gains and estate taxes and expansion of Individual Retirement Accounts.

Many of these are praiseworthy measures, but they strike us as small beer. Deeper cuts in the capital gains tax would unlock trillions in capital, speed its velocity into more productive hands and unleash an explosion in entrepreneurial activity, producing millions of new business owners and jobs. The death tax, usually called the estate tax, should be eliminated entirely.

Given the realities of divided government and the slim GOP margin of control in the House, perhaps it is true, as GOP leaders say, that this is the best deal they could get. GOP congressional leaders, however, had better remember the voters who gave them control and start fighting for more than this.