Dole Says Clinton Scaring Older Voters About Gop Budget Cuts Republican Nominee Gets In A Few Last Digs Before Vacation

Girding for a week in which he expects to be overshadowed by the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Bob Dole came here Saturday to accuse President Clinton of trying to scare elderly voters about Republican budget cuts.

Dole planned to needle Clinton one more time with a picnic today outside the Democrats’ convention city before retiring to a low-profile week devoted mostly to a vacation.

The target Saturday was elderly voters, as Dole tried to blunt the Clinton administration’s assertions that his plan for a tax cut would lead to cuts in Medicare and Social Security, which could damage Dole with this state’s most active constituency. Clinton used a similar line of attack with great success in his 1992 Democratic primary battle here.

“I’m not going to touch your Social Security,” Dole told a predominantly younger crowd that filled a University of Tampa gymnasium this morning. “We’re trying to save Social Security.”

Dole recounted his own central role in the 1983 effort in Congress to save Social Security from bankruptcy, but he did not remind his listeners that the package had included a payroll tax increase. He said Clinton was trying to scare elderly voters into voting against him.

“We’re trying to save the programs,” he said. “We’re not trying to devastate the programs.”

Even as Dole expressed confidence that he could implement his tax cut, which has become the center of his campaign stump speech, he made it clear, in an interview published Saturday, what his priorities would be in preparing budgets as president. “The Balanced Budget Amendment is going to be No. 1, balancing the budget by the year 2002, and tax cuts are No. 2,” Dole is quoted as saying in the Chicago Tribune.

At the same time, Dole’s campaign issued a revised accounting of how he would implement the $548 billion tax cut. His economic aides said that due to robust economic growth during the early part of the year, they were now projecting $80 billion in additional revenue over the next six years. Those revised projections - if correct - would diminish the need for the $219 billion in spending cuts that Dole’s aides had originally said were needed.