Rod Grams: “It is easy to campaign as a champion of the middle class. As you know, President Clinton did it in 1992, when he made…”

“It is easy to campaign as a champion of the middle class. As you know, President Clinton did it in 1992, when he made the middle-class tax cut the centerpiece of his campaign. His very first television commercial that year featured the candidate looking directly into the camera and telling the voters that they deserve a change. "That is why I have offered a plan to get the economy moving again, starting with a middle-class tax cut," he said. Of course, we all know what happened to that tax cut a year later. The candidate who pinned his campaign to the hopes and dreams of the middle class became the President who let the middle class down once he moved into the Oval Office. His campaign promise of a tax cut was transformed into a $270 billion tax increase--the largest tax increase in American history. It was change, all right--but certainly not the kind of change the people had asked for or were promised. Everyone who drives a motor vehicle knows what the President's 4.3-cent-per-gallon tax increase has done to their annual gasoline bills--especially recently, with gas prices around the Nation at such high levels. By boosting the cost of gasoline by nearly $5 billion every year, the gas tax has been particularly damaging for truckers, farmers, and anyone who lives in rural areas of the country.”