Bentsen Signals White House's Willingness to Deal; As Senate Prepares to Take Up Tax Plan, Administration Shows It Can Play Traditional Politics
While President Clinton claimed victory for getting most of his tax proposals through the House Ways and Means Committee, he compromised on details and accepted the kind of the traditional interest group deal-making that he had crusaded against.</br></br>Yesterday, Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen signaled that more compromises may lie ahead in the Senate, where some conservative Democrats have criticized the proposed energy tax and have joined Republicans in exploring alternatives to Clinton's overall plan.</br></br>"If we can find a bipartisan way to do it, that's fine," Bentsen said on NBC's "Meet the Press," although he quickly added, "I don't want to see it stray too far from what we've already proposed."</br></br>Clinton preserved his tax plan's bottom line, an estimated $246 billion of added revenue over the next five years to help reduce the deficit and pay for his programs. But, as some see it, the self- proclaimed agent of change prevailed by doing business as usual.</br></br>Forced to choose between digging in his heels against Democratic members of the Ways and Means Committee and accommodating influential interests, Clinton last week accepted concessions to aluminum producers, real estate developers, multinational corporations and the energy industry, among others.