12/07/00 4:35 p.m.
Tax-Cut Timing
The House wants to move fast, but maybe it shouldn’t.

By NR’s John J. Miller & Ramesh Ponnuru

he House Republican leadership wants to pass a bill cutting taxes and raising the minimum wage this month, before the current Congress ends. Senate Republicans are balking. The senators have the better of the political argument. Republicans are not going to get much credit for passing a tax cut now; to the extent Americans are paying attention to politics at all, they're paying attention to Florida. Passing the bill now will also deprive George W. Bush of an easy "bipartisan accomplishment" to start his term. Passing it under Bush might yield a better deal, too. (During the campaign, Bush said he favors a higher minimum wage with an opt-out for states.) And passing a minimum-wage hike in 2001, rather than in 2000, would make it easier to resist demands for an additional increase in 2002. Finally, a tax cut can always be made retroactive — which would be a nice counterpoint to the retroactive tax hike President Clinton signed in 1993.

The only motivation for the House leadership to push for early enactment is a quaint desire to finish its work for the session. The senators are likely to win this fight, and probably should.

No to Peltier
The White House is reviewing a clemency request from Leonard Peltier, who was convicted for murdering two FBI agents in 1975. On Tuesday, FBI director Louis Freeh wrote letters to President Clinton, Attorney General Janet Reno, and House judiciary committee chairman Henry Hyde expressing strong opposition to any commutation of Peltier's sentence. He wrote Hyde, "In my seven years as FBI director, I have not seen a position felt strongly or shared widely the opposition to this possibility."

Peltier is a romantic hero to some on the left because he was a leader of the American Indian Movement. But the evidence is very strong that he is a cold-blooded murderer. As Freeh's letters detail, it appears likely that one of the two young agents he killed was on his knees trying to surrender when he was shot in the face. Hyde says that he "wholeheartedly" agrees with Freeh.