Mayor Softens On Rangel's $1T Tax Plan

Mayor Bloomberg is softening his stance on Rep. Charles Rangel's $1 trillion tax plan, an indication that the mayor will not stand with Republican leaders in opposing the proposal.

Mr. Bloomberg said yesterday that there's "an awful lot of things that Charlie Rangel's bill addresses that are good."

On Friday, during his WABC radio show, Mr. Bloomberg said the tax plan would "certainly hurt New York." He tried to backtrack yesterday by stating that he didn't say it was a "terrible bill."

"I said, 'We're going to have to look at it: Things we like, things we don't, things we'll try to negotiate, things that we'll succeed in negotiating, and things that we won't,'" he said.

The bill would eliminate the alternative minimum tax, which Mr. Rangel proposed offsetting by imposing a surtax of 4% to 4.6% on families earning more than $200,000 a year.

Mr. Rangel included in his plan an expansion of the earned income tax credit, which Bloomberg has called for, but it is unclear if the details of the proposal are exactly what Mr. Bloomberg wanted.

An economist with the Fiscal Policy Institute, James Parrott, said it sounded as though Mr. Bloomberg made his initial remark before understanding the thrust of the bill.

"He knows that he's wrong and that Rangel has a good approach and it will benefit a lot of New Yorkers," he said.

Mr. Rangel has dubbed the proposal "the mother of all tax reform," but Republican leaders have begun referring to it as "the mother of all tax hikes."