here is a lot that is frightening about an Al Gore presidency, but near the top of the list are his strange ideas about taxes. Every tax cut that Republicans come up with is reflexively attacked as a "dangerous scheme" by the Vice President. And despite a $3-trillion, ten-year projected tax surplus, Mr. Gore has no tax cut plans of his own that he has shared with the rest of us.

Earlier this year, when Bill Bradley was biting at Gore's heel and the Vice President was forced to prove to Democratic voters that he is sufficiently left-wing to lead his party (was there ever really any doubt?), Gore often confessed that the vote in Congress that he regrets most was in 1981, when he voted for the famous Reagan tax cut. What got into him! It stands to reason that if he had the power to do so, he would gladly repeal the Reagan tax cuts.

What would the world look like if Mr. Gore could atone for his sin, by erasing the consequences of Reagan's "tax cutting scheme"? Senator Connie Mack, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, asked the number-crunchers on Capitol Hill to furnish some answers. How high would taxes be if the Reagan tax cuts had never come to pass?

How does the idea of an $871-billion tax hike grab you? No no no — not over ten years or five years. Per year. This translates into an average per household increase of about $8,500 in federal income taxes. If you make between $30,000 and $75,000 a year, your IRS tax bill would rise by between 40 and 55 percent.

Mr. Mack's report reminds us that back in the good old days of the 1970s, the top U.S. tax rate was 70 percent (compared with 40 percent today). And get this: the top tax rate hit single filers once they reached an income of just $41,500. The capital gains rate was 28 percent, and there was no indexing the tax brackets for inflation. The JTC concludes: "This proposal has the potential to approximately double present-law individual income tax liability."

There you have it, folks: Al Gore's vision of tax utopia. Sounds more like a dangerous tax scheme to me!

Moore is director of fiscal policy studies at the Cato Institute and president of the Club for Growth.