rastructure investment had the restorative powers claimed for it, the Bush years would have been a golden age" ("The Clinton Plan," 14).
The investment tax credit was first enacted in 1962 as a way to prime the economic pump. The idea has slipped in and out of the tax code seven times since then. It was most recently repealed in the 1986 Tax Reform Act when critics charged that much of the $30 billion-a-year revenue loss went to subsidize investments that would have been made without the tax credit. Business lobbyists at the time said it would return with the next recession, and it has. A new version of the investment tax credit has been suggested by Bill Clinton and by congressional Democrats such as House Ways and Means Committee members Sander M. Levin of Michigan and Frank J. Guarini of New Jersey, and a number of Republicans have also been exploring ways to revive the issue (Gleckman, 31).
Clinton's overall tax policy was to include the investment tax credit, according to what was said in the campaign. Clinton would juggle the tax code to redistribute income by cutting taxes by $11.50 a week for a middle-class family of four while raising the top rate from 31 percent to 36 percent on incomes above $200,000. He would also place a surcharge on earnings above $1 million. Clinton would lower the capital gains rate to 14 percent for long-term investments in new companies and crack down in alleged tax avoidance by foreign firms with United States operations. A panel of economic experts brought together by Time magazine said that Clinton's plan would tend to reduce saving by the wealthy without providing much of a boost to the middle class. Any cut in the capital gains tax was also seen as something that would not have much effect when inflation is low (Greenwald, 39).
Now that Governor Clinton has been elected president, the business community has focused on his tax package and other economic proposals in order to see...