Rep Candidates Focus on Taxes

Mirroring the heated debate on terms and deficits in the presidential elections, exchanges between the two Republication candidates for the Massachusetts Senate sent have increasingly centered on whether the government should take a bigger bite out of your income.

With only a week of campaigning left before next Tuesday's state primary, user dog Ray Stannic has emphasized this opposition to say test in creases to cut the budget deficit. The self-made millionaire businessman has attempted, with some success, to depict opponent Eliot L. Richardson '41 as eager to like taxes.

In a televised debate last week at Faneuil Hall, Shamie, a lively and aggressive speaker, continued to identify ideologically with president Reagan, whom he quoted as being opposed to say new taxes to reduce the deficit.

Richard son whipped out a clip of his own, quaking Reagan's speech from the previous day in which the President acknowledged that taxes would have to be increased if needed at a last resort.

"He never made an ironclad guarantee of no new taxes." Richardson told a statewide audience in the hour-long debate. "The arithmetic may force us to raise taxes."

His explanations to the contrary, front runner Richardson has been placed on the defensive on the tax issue, despite repeated assertions that he only favors new taxes or budget cuts and economic growth do not result in substantial new revenues.

"Elliot, you're always argued for taxes," said Shamie, who argues that '12, percent growth rate over the next two years will wipe out the estimated $200 billion deficit.

In an interview after the debate, Share continued to hammer Richardson for wanting to raise taxes. "Elliot was trying to establish that the President secretly harbors a plan to raise taxes," he said.

Richardson, for his part, argued after after the debate that Shamie has misrepresented the Administration's stance on taxes. "The President couldn't have timed his speech better," he said.

The former attorney general has maintained that Sharnie's belief in moderate growth as a means to eliminate the deficit (a belief held by the conservative wing of the party) is unreasonable, saying that only massive, prolonged growth could impact the deficit.

Shemie, who supports a balanced budget amendment, ran into trouble of his own on the tax issues last week, when he said on a radio talk show that he is unfamiliar with major 1983 legislation that raised Social Security taxes to bail out the ailing program.

He also had difficulty explaining why he agrees with suppy-side economist Milton Friedman--who says there is no correlates between interest rates and tans--and still believes that is "historical fact" that the deficit decreases by $20 billion for each percentage point drop in interest rates.

Shaims clarified his stance in an interview, saying that interest rates and deficits are only related in the long term, and that yearly fluctuations in lending rates do not directly affect the deficit.

The debate over taxes has been symptomatic of this entire camping, which has become a contest between members of opposite wings of the Republican part. Richardson, an old-line Brahmin who has held doses of cabinet posts, including Secretary of Defense, has advocated a more liberal approach to social and foreign policy issue, supporting ERA, abortion rights, busing, and the nuclear freeze, and opposing U.S. military involvement in Central America.

Shamie, a businessman and inventor who has never served in government before, is a should-mate of the populist-conservatives who hold away in party platform formulation last month at the Dellas convention. Shemie palled nearly 40 percent of the vote two years ago when he ran against Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Maas.), pushing a similar economic and foreign policy agenda.

"You can tell alot about the candidates from what they say about taxes," Shamie side Charles Meaning said yesterday.

Messing added that Shamie is pushing taxes because it best illustrates what the campaign would like to show as basic philosophical differences between the candidates. Painting Richardson as supporting tax like "place on him the Washington mantle as a man supporting bigger government," he said.

Richardson press secretary David Gilroy Countered yesterday that Shamie has tried to focus on the tax issue to detract attention from Richardson's proposals for a nuclear freeze, conflict prevention, and environmental issues. But he added, "Taxes are obviously a very emotional issue."

The two candidates will again debate before a television salience tonight at Faneuil Hall. The 8 p.m. debate will be carried live by WNEY-TV, Channel 7, and WEEI radio.