MR. PRESIDENT, DON'T VETO THOSE TAX CUTS

So now the decision is President Clinton's. It is the chief executive who will decide, in this election year as Washington's budget surpluses swell stupendously, whether Americans will receive tax cuts. Republican majorities in the House and Senate have delivered to his desk not one, but two significant tax cuts before the summer is half over. Nice work.

First to arrive on his desk is the 10-year phase-out of perhaps the most unfair and infuriating tax of all: the death tax. Next to be sent to the president is the GOP bill alleviating the income-tax marriage penalty. Both measures have been goals for conservative tax cutters, pro-family groups and small-business leaders for many years.

What's encouraging about this performance by Republican congressional leaders is that they delivered these two tax-cut bills over stiff Democratic opposition and, in the case of the marriage-tax relief, a presidential veto threat. This suggests that media noise, their narrow majority and countless other frustrations notwithstanding, congressional Republicans are keeping their eyes on the ball. This is no small feat. In fact, if the Congress can pass appropriations bills on time and do nothing else but these tax cuts before adjourning as early as possible, this will have been a better Congress than most.

We are constantly told that this president is obsessed with his legacy, even famously musing that he didn't get to preside over a major war during his tenure in office.

Now his legacy-building deliberations must include calculations of whether he wants to be the man who halted two highly popular tax cuts approximately 90 days before a general election that will decide whether his chosen successor will become only the second sitting vice president since 1836 to win the White House.

Of course, he might decide to fall back on standard Democratic golden oldies about "tax cuts for the rich." But the evidence of the congressional debates, and the many in his own party who didn't buy into this stale demagoguery, suggests that those old jukebox tunes don't resonate like they used to. In either case the GOP is well-positioned for the fall slug-fest.