WASHINGTON -- Senate Republican leader Howard Baker said Sunday congressional approval of President Reagan's huge tax cut is 'a riverboat gamble ... that this new economics will work.'
Baker appeared on CBS' 'Face the Nation' the day before the Senate was to give its final approval of Reagan's tax cut package, which calls for a 33-month, 25 percent tax cut and indexing tax rates to the inflation rate beginning in 1985.
Indexing will mean a permanent tax cut and a steady reduction in money provided the Treasury.
'What we're doing is really a riverboat gamble,' Baker conceded. 'We're gambling that this new economics will work.'
But Baker, R-Tenn., predicted 'you're going to see an esprit de corps in this country' in support of Reagan's economic program.
On the controversial issue of eliminating the $122-a-month minimum Social Security benefit, Bakersaid, 'I don't think the president has reneged' on his campaign promises by planning to discontinue the benefit.
Of the 3 million Americans receiving the benefit, Baker said, one-third are 'double dippers' -- individuals who receive either federal pensions or outside income and are not truly needy. Baker said payments to them 'amounts to billions of dollars.'
'Minimum Social Security benefits are not part of the Social Security System,' he said, calling the benefit an 'add-on' adopted in the 1930s.
'There is no doubt in my mind,' Baker said, 'that those who are truly poor and needy deserve to have their needs addressed and taken care of.
'But there is also no doubt that if the Social Security System is going to survive, we must unload those things that are not related to Social Security. And minimum benefits are not earned Social Security.'
On other issues, Baker said:
--The Voting Rights Act 'should not be permitted to expire,' but he does not rule out modifications to the law, such as extending the act nationwide.
--The administration should do 'everything necessary' -- including legal action and fines -- to avoid an air traffic controllers' strike, but it should not negotiate with the controllers if they strike.
--He expects the president to notify Congress in October or November about the sale of sophisticated AWAC early-warning aircraft to Saudi Arabia.
