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| LETTING IT RIDE | |
 September 3, 1999 
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Taking a look at boom town Las Vegas, correspondent Kwame Holman reports on the Republicans' efforts to sell their tax cut bill to constituents during the August recess and the mixed responses they've received.
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SHELLEY BERKLEY: We were en route to California for my dad to get a job and he had a letter of introduction with him. We stopped in Las Vegas for the night. We never left.
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KWAME HOLMAN: The self-described daughter of a waiter and a housewife, Shelly Berkley went on to law school, the legal department of a major Las Vegas hotel, and last year was elected to Congress. She now represents a million constituents and rising -- twice the population of most congressional districts.
KWAME HOLMAN: The Freshman Democrat says the entertainment industry workers she represents are not clamoring for the $792 billion tax cut passed by congressional Republicans in July. SHELLEY BERKLEY: Nobody seems to be that concerned about it, and I'll tell you why. In my community, if you're making $55,000 or less, and this is a community of working people, that's the income level here $55,000 or less, you will get back from that $800 billion less than a dollar a day. You can't buy a cup of coffee for less than a dollar a day in this country. KWAME HOLMAN: Las Vegas is responsible for the bulk of an estimated nine billion tax dollars Nevada will send to Washington this year. Republicans say giving Americans back some of that federal tax money will help make a strong national economy even stronger. TERRY LANNI: It's each of our employees' money and their families' money, and the government should take no more than it needs. KWAME HOLMAN: Terry Lanni is a Republican and chairman and CEO of MGM Grand Incorporated, which employs more than 10,000 people at its two hotel-casinos in Las Vegas. He defends the main feature of the Republican tax cut bill -- a one percentage point reduction in each of the five income tax rates.
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| Eliminating the so-called marriage penalty | ||||||||||||||||||||
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(ORGAN PLAYING "HERE COMES THE BRIDE") KWAME HOLMAN: That sounded like a good idea to Justin Mondragon and his bride, Kimberly, both of Fort Collins, Colorado
KWAME HOLMAN: Joe Contini also likes features of the Republican tax cut bill. The 32-year-old deals blackjack at the MGM Grand. Contini is a registered Republican and applauds the bill's higher ceilings on contributions to 401(k) Individual Retirement Accounts and enhancements to employer-paid pensions for workers. But Contini says he doesn't really need a general tax cut.
KWAME HOLMAN: Such lukewarm support for the Republican tax bill is shared by a large segment of taxpayers. A late August USA Today, CNN, Gallup poll described the public as generally favoring tax cuts but without much enthusiasm. Many Americans say the federal budget surpluses projected for the next 10 years should first go toward reducing the national debt and shoring up the Social Security and Medicare programs. |
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TV ANCHOR: Congressman Jim Gibbons talks about tax cuts when he joins us in the studio next. KWAME HOLMAN: That's why Republican members of Congress fanned out
during their August recess to herald the tax cut they passed in July.
Second-term Nevada Republican Jim Gibbons rejects the charge the Republican
plan fails to address the national debt and saving Social
JIM GIBBONS: In most people their eyes glaze over when you start talking about the facts of capital gains. The facts are most Americans have an asset, as I talked about earlier, that deals with capital gains. We're reducing capital gains by 2 percent this year. I know it doesn't sound like much but we're working it down. KWAME HOLMAN: But there were few questions this night about the tax cut bill. In fact, many of these Nevadans oppose taxes in general and some called for abolishing the Internal Revenue Service. JIM GIBBONS: It looks like you're for the flat tax? SPOKESMAN: Either flat, or square, or however you want it but I want to get rid of the IRS, period. JIM GIBBONS: Well, we have your information here and this is important because let me say that when we go back to looking to how we're going to deal and revise the Internal Revenue Code, we want your input. KWAME HOLMAN: Recent Nevada immigrant Ray Bales was a newspaperman with the San Jose Mercury News in California. He spoke in opposition to the Republican tax cuts.
KWAME HOLMAN: But our informal poll of those who attended found most were generally supportive of the tax cut plan. SPOKESMAN: Why not give it back to the people who earned it? It seems fair to me.
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| Is it a break? | ||||||||||||||||||||
| KWAME HOLMAN: Linda and Burt Basciano have owned a farm
supply store in Overton called The Spur for almost a year. Linda Basciano
said at their moderate income level the proposed tax cut is unlikely to
make much of a difference to her family of three.
JIM GIBBONS: Thank you. Thanks for coming. KWAME HOLMAN: The Republicans' recess campaign hopes to turn public opinion toward a more favorable view of their tax cut plan. They say if that happens, President Clinton -- who says the tax cuts are too large -- will have to rescind his threat to veto the package. Still, they say there's room for compromise with the President and congressional Democrats.
KWAME HOLMAN: Congresswoman Berkley says Democrats will hold to their opposition as long as the tax cut package remains so large it would force big cuts in federal spending. SHELLEY BERKLEY: I'm not suggesting that we don't have any tax cut. I'm just saying let's be fiscally responsible instead of looking for the next campaign issue. And this tax cut isn't going to do my constituents one bit of good, but it's going to be devastating for my school age kids, it's going to be devastating for my seniors, devastating for my veterans, and it's going to kill programs that help thousands and thousands of minority people that are just getting started. KWAME HOLMAN: In boom town Las Vegas - like much of the country -- such concerns may seem far off to large segments of the population riding high on the economy. In that atmosphere of good economic times, Republicans and Democrats will leave their districts and return to Washington next week to rejoin the tax cut debate. |
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KWAME
HOLMAN: The jewel of the desert has never glittered more brightly. Las
Vegas, Nevada is America's boom town. Always a top international tourist
destination, Vegas is attracting growing numbers who are coming to stay.
They expect to take advantage of a burgeoning local economy centered
on the gaming and entertainment industries and an affordability factor
that includes no state income taxes. Shelley Berkley's family landed
in Las Vegas 38 years ago.
KWAME
HOLMAN: Variations on that story line are playing out at a record pace
today. Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the country; every month,
an average 5,000 new residents drive up an area population of about
1.2 million.
SHELLEY
BERKLEY: I've got 150,000 working families on the Las Vegas strip, and
they depend on a good economy and a good community in order to get enough
money to raise their families and take care of business. 
TERRY
LANNI: Now, the people at the high end of the tax bracket, as you know,
pay for something like 86 percent of the taxes that are paid at the
federal level, so most of the tax cuts would benefit those people because
they are the highest taxpayers. But the fact that it's across the board
would help every single individual who is an employee or a past member
of MGM Grand because it would allow them to keep more of their own money.
KWAME
HOLMAN: Another feature in the Republican tax cut bill may entice those
who come here for the traditional Vegas wedding. It would eliminate
the so-called marriage penalty, which forces some married couples to
pay higher federal taxes than they would if they remained single.
JUSTIN
MONDRAGON: People who want to take the plunge like we're going to do,
they're kind of scared because you're going to be paying more taxes,
you know, so you might be hesitant to take that plunge, so I think they
should get rid of it. It would be better for everybody.
JOE
CONTINI: I have my four children, my wife, my mother that live with
me. I get a lot of tax breaks on my tax bill right now. They really
don't take any money out, so if they give me a tax break, I'm not going
to really get any of it. So they're really pushing at the wrong person
when they're trying to look for me for support for their tax bill.
JIM
GIBBONS: The Republican plan puts out $2.2 trillion in the payment of
the reduction of the debt, which is $200 billion more than the Clinton
proposal in his offer. Even the Social Security Administration has said
that what we have done with the Social Security lock box saves Social
Security for all time, not just a decade, not just a century, but all
time, which is very important for seniors, very important for the future
of those people depending on it. 
KWAME
HOLMAN: Gibbons represents the suburbs surrounding Las Vegas. At an
open house a few miles outside Las Vegas two weeks ago, Gibbons focused
on the cut in capital gains taxes to show the Republicans' plan is aimed
at helping average folks.
RAY
BALES: Instead of giving the people a tax cut, they ought to take care
of these people's senior citizens who cannot afford prescription drugs.
They should be looking at that first before we give anybody a tax break.
They have senior citizens that either have to put food on the table
or take their pills. That's a choice of one or the other, and we shouldn't
have that in this country.
KWAME
HOLMAN: That's a view that's shared well away from the glitz and glitter
of Las Vegas. Overton lies about 60 miles northeast of the big city.
Russ Babb owns the Best Western Hotel. While he expressed some ambivalence
about the overall tax bill, he said he likes the Republicans' idea of
cutting the personal capital gains tax.
RUSS
BABB: Well, for instance, when we were building this place, I ended
up selling some property up in Salt Lake and taking the money to put
into this, and I still had to pay capital gains on that. And so I --
you know -- I ended up losing thousands of dollars to the government
for that, even though I put it into this and I still pay taxes on this.
One of these days I'm going to sell this place and retire, and I'll
be hit with capital gains. And depending on what they are at the time,
I might not make any money off of it, you know, even though I've built
this thing from the ground up, I've worked it, you know, 14 hours a
day for a year so far, I'll be penalized for that basically.
LINDA
BASCIANO: I just feel like when somebody says tax cut, I'm like yeah,
a thousand dollars, two thousand dollars. Now that I can use. Two or
three hundred dollars, to me, doesn't really hit me as a break. I mean,
I guess every little bit helps, but it would be nice if I had a thousand
dollars to stick in a savings account; that would be a break.
JIM
GIBBONS: There is always that opportunity. But getting them to actually
help out on something has been a struggle. The Democrats have always
wanted to be obstructionists in any proposed policy like this over the
last several months.