President Bush Pushes Tax Cut Proposal; Workplace Shooting in Illinois Leaves Five Dead
WOLF BLITZER, HOST: President Bush launches an all-out push to sell his proposed $1.6 trillion tax-cut plan.</s>GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Every American who pays income taxes will get tax relief.</s>BLITZER: But opponents say the wealthiest Americans will get the most relief. I'll talk live with two senators on opposite sides of the debate: Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Kent Conrad. Yet another U.S. workplace shooting: A gunman opens fire in a Navistar engine plant near Chicago, killing and wounding as employees flee in panic. And it's now election day in Israel, where polls show challenger Ariel Sharon far ahead of Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Palestinians are calling it a day of rage. We'll have a live report from CNN's Christiane Amanpour in Tel Aviv. Good evening. I'm Wolf Blitzer, reporting tonight from Capitol Hill. A deadly workplace shooting in Illinois today. We'll have a live report shortly. But first, here in Washington, President Bush is staying on message and the message is tax cuts, large across-the-board tax cuts, and that's our top story.</s>BUSH: This is my approach: tax relief for everybody in every bracket.</s>BLITZER (voice-over): President Bush brought three families to the White House to highlight how his plan would benefit Americans. The president's proposal would cost $1.6 trillion over 10 years, reduce the lowest income tax-rate from 15 percent to 10 percent, and the highest rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent.</s>BUSH: I believe it's an important principle that no American should pay more than a third of his or her income to the federal government in federal taxes.</s>BLITZER: Mr. Bush would like the cuts to be retroactive to January 1st of this year. But selling that plan to Democrats, who favor tax cuts about half the size of the president's, won't be easy. They say Mr. Bush's proposal is too expensive, jeopardizes the federal surplus, and favors the rich.</s>SEN. THOMAS DASCHLE (D-SD), MINORITY LEADER: If you make over $300,000 a year, this tax cut means you get to buy a new Lexus. If you make $50,000 a year, you get to buy a muffler on your used car.</s>BLITZER: Mr. Bush insists his tax breaks will benefit the rich and the middle class by doubling the child tax credit to $1,000 per child, eliminating the inheritance tax, and reducing the marriage penalty on two-earner couples.</s>BUSH: My plan is good for the long-term health of our economy. It is good for the businesses that create jobs.</s>BLITZER: For more on the president's tax-cut plan and the debate it's sparking, let's turn to CNN senior White House correspondent John King. John, the president wants $1.6 trillion, the Democrats say about $800 billion. Is this a case where they can split the difference or are the Democrats likely to cave on this issue?</s>JOHN KING, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Oh, the Democrats will hold fast for now, Wolf. Too soon to say the honeymoon is over, but certainly here at least the first fight over the bank account. Democrats say you can't count on those surpluses, you can't cut taxes this much. But remember, there are Republicans on the other side who say let's cut taxes even more. So where the White House sees this debate beginning, they feel the president's in a good place: in the middle, if you will, between the Democrats who say 800, 850 billion -- some Republicans saying 2 trillion dollars. Even if you split the difference between where Senator Daschle is and President Bush begins, you get a $1.2 trillion tax cut. But the president thinks he'll get even more than that. The worry is that some Republicans will want to go even higher.</s>BLITZER: Well, Republicans, some of them at least do want to go higher. They want to include capital gains tax cuts, some of them, which is not in the president's plan. They're beginning to smell that tax cut fever, which could increase that $1.6 trillion level.</s>KING: And remember, Wolf, the Republicans have run the Congress now for six years, but for the past six years, there was a Democratic president holding a veto pen saying, no, I will not let you cut taxes like you want. So you have many Republicans in Congress who believe it is time to cut the capital gains tax, like you said, to cut other corporate taxes. You've got the entire business community lined up on K Street here in Washington hiring expensive lobbyists, saying: Wait a minute, this shouldn't all just go to individual taxpayers. What about us in corporate America? We are the engines of this economy. So in fact, the biggest concern here at the Republican White House is that perhaps this debate might get out of hand in the Republican Congress and that President Bush will be saying, whoa, not so much, we can't afford it. To quote his top economic advisers, the more ornaments you put on the Christmas tree, the heavier the tree gets. So the president right now saying $1.6 trillion is his bottom line. We'll see how that debate unfolds in the weeks and months ahead.</s>BLITZER: All right, John King at the White House, thank you very much. Meanwhile, new details are emerging tonight in a deadly shooting rampage at an Illinois engine plant. Five people died. Four others were wounded in the attack at the Navistar International plant. Joining us now live from that plant in Melrose Park, Illinois with the latest is CNN's Lisa Leiter. Lisa, tell us what happened.</s>LISA LEITER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, when a security guard tried to stop the alleged gunman, who is now dead, he put a .38 caliber revolver at her side, and that's when the rampage started.</s>LEITER (voice-over): Chaos erupted at 9:44 a.m. at the Navistar engine plant outside Chicago.</s>CHIEF VITO SCAVO, MELROSE PARK POLICE: Walked down one hallway and opened fire randomly at the victims. He ended up at a small office in an engineering office and took his own life.</s>LEITER: William D. Baker had worked with the company for 40 years. He was fired from the company for stealing. Baker was convicted and set to start a 5-month prison term on Tuesday. Police recovered a golf bag containing an arsenal of weapons.</s>SCAVO: The weapons that are recovered are one AK-47 assault rifle, one 38 revolver, one Remington 870 shotgun, pump, and one 30- caliber hunting rifle.</s>LEITER: Workers were shocked and saddened as details came to light.</s>JOHN HORNE, CEO, NAVISTAR INTERNATIONAL: This has obviously been a terrible day at International for the company and for all the employees and the victims of this incident.</s>LEITER: Well, Wolf, it will not be business as usual here at this engine plant tomorrow. The overnight shift is not coming in, and it's up to employees whether they want to come in tomorrow during the day. The company telling us tonight that they will have counselors on hand for those who decide to come in -- Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Lisa Leiter in Melrose Park, Illinois, thank you very much. Overseas, election day has now arrived in Israel while Palestinians have declared a day of rage. Polls show Prime Minister Ehud Barak trailing challenger Ariel Sharon by a large margin as peace efforts have faltered amid months of violence. Joining me now live from Tel Aviv is CNN's Christiane Amanpour. Christiane, I want to get to the Palestinian reaction to a likely Sharon win in a second, but is it a forgone conclusion among Israelis -- and you're talking to them over there -- that Sharon is going to beat Barak?</s>CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, the polls open in four hours, and frankly, if you've been watching the newspapers, reading the newspapers, watching the television over here, they've all been focusing on the day after. The opinion poll lead is so large that most people do consider it a foregone conclusion, although when you talk to Labour Party members, as we have been doing certainly even tonight, they simply will not give up hope until the very last moment, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Christiane, how are the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza likely to react to Ariel Sharon becoming prime minister of Israel?</s>AMANPOUR: Well, all along, the Palestinians have been saying for public consumption that there is no difference to them between an Ariel Sharon or an Ehud Barak. They say, we haven't got the peace by one, and the other one is not likely to give it, therefore, there is no real difference. However, there are privately many Palestinians who are expressing a sense of dismay and foreboding, saying that they don't know what will happen if there's a Sharon-led government, given the public statement's he's made over what kind of peace he would offer. Many saying that the Intifada will certainly continue and that they won't accept what they call, a senior Palestinian said, the charade of peace. They hope to take up any future peace negotiations from where they left off at Taba in Egypt just a week ago and also from Camp David. The Sharon camp is looking very differently. They say they'll honor existing agreements, but they start from that point and not from the concessions that Barak has offered and the negotiations that have been going, although fitfully, over the last several months, Wolf.</s>BLITZER: Christiane Amanpour, up late in Tel Aviv tonight. Tomorrow at 3:00 p.m. Eastern, Christiane will be anchoring our special coverage of the Israeli elections, once the polls close, 3:00 p.m. Eastern, noon on the West Coast. Thank you very much, Christiane. Up next: It was once seen as an election campaign pipe-dream. Now, President Bush has launched his tax-cut campaign. I'll discuss it live with two key members of the Senate on opposite sides of the debate: Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Kent Conrad.