Republican George Bush today portrayed Michael Dukakis as the odd man out in opposing a reduction in capital gains taxes, and said his Democratic opponent is ``just itching to repeal'' income tax cuts enacted in President Reagan's first term. Fortified by new polls showing him with a double-digit lead, the vice president attacked Dukakis at a luncheon sponsored by the Detroit Economic Club and the Women's Economic Club. Playing it safe, Bush stuck to time-tested themes. The GOP nominee has proposed slashing the capital gains tax on profits from stocks, real estate and other assets from its current top of 33 percent to 15 percent. Dukakis denounced it as a tax break for the wealthy and said it would give Bush himself a $22,000 tax break annually. Defending his plan as a way to spur investments and create jobs, Bush said, ``Over the years, it's been endorsed by everyone from John F. Kennedy to Lloyd Bentsen to my running mate, Dan Quayle, to Ronald Reagan and George Bush.'' Bentsen is Dukakis' vice presidential running mate. ``It is not a tax break for the rich. It is a break for those who want to have a job in this country and I am for it,'' Bush said. ``Unfortunately, my opponent's only experience with business is regulating it and taxing it,'' Bush said. ``He's never run a business. He's never started a business. He's never met a payroll. He doesn't understand how when you're starting out, you need people to join you in taking risks. So he paints my proposal as an effort to help the rich.'' ``Wrong,'' Bush told his audience of 1,600 people. The vice president also said that since Reagan took office in 1981, the administration has cut personal income tax rates by an average 27 percent. He said there has been an undeniable link between low taxes and economic growth. Bush said Dukakis was asked during the Democratic primary race if he would repeal the 1981 tax cuts. He said Dukakis shrugged his shoulders and called the tax cut ``one of the worse bills that Congress every could have passed'' and ``a government-made disaster.'' Bush said, ``Those sound to me like the words of someone who is just itching to repeal one of the most successful economic policies in our history, and I know why. He has proposed mandated new spending, both by government and by business, that will cost ... billions and billions and billions.'' He said that if elected on Nov. 8, he will tell Congress that ``the American people, in electing me, voted against a tax increase'' and that instead, spending increases should be limited to the inflation rate. Bush told a GOP barbecue in Lima, Ohio, on Monday that the election was about keeping the country strong economically and militarily. ``We cannot gamble America's future on a president who hasn't had one single day's experience in national defense matters or foreign affairs,'' Bush said, winning cheers from the audience. A handful of hecklers shouted noisily at him during his speech, and Bush said, ``I'm glad they're here.'' He urged the audience to ask the protesters how high interest rates and inflation were during the last Democratic administration, and then supplied the answers _ 21 percent for the former and in double digits for the latter. Working his way toward the battleground state of California, where he will campaign later this week, Bush planned stops today at rallies at a stockyard in Sioux Falls, S.D., and at a high school in Billings, Mont. In the evening, he was flying to Tacoma, Wash., to campaign there Thursday morning. Whereas Michigan offers the prospect of 20 electoral votes, South Dakota has only three and Montana has only four. However, all three states are on Dukakis' blueprint for reaching the 270 needed to win the White House, so Bush is doing his best to keep them out of the Democratic column. His campaign was bouyed Tuesday by news of two new polls indicating that Bush has solidified his lead in the two weeks since the last presidential debate. A CBS News-New York Times poll showed Bush with a 13-point advantage, 54-41 percent, while a Gallup poll showed Bush with a 14-point edge, 53-39 percent. With things going his way, Bush stuck to a familiar theme Tuesday: hammering Dukakis about the economy during stops in Ohio in Canton, Columbus and Lima.
