2 - The Michigan Daily - Wednesday, October 22, 1997 White House, Congress agree on IRS proposal NATION/WORLD AROUND THE NATIQ Trade deficit soars to seven-month high WASHINGTON - America's monthly trade deficit ballooned to $10.4 billion as imports of toys and Christmas decorations pushed the trade gap with China to an all-time high just before the U.S.-China summit. The widening deficit in August reported yesterday was the worst showing in seven months and came at an inopportune time for President Clinton, who is try- ing to sell a reluctant Congress on the virtues of free trade while also preparing for the state visit next week of Chinese President Jiang Zemin. The administration hopes the summit will showcase closer ties between the* countries. The U.S. appetite for imports from all countries hit a new record in August..On the export side, sales of commercial jetliners, normally a bright spot in the trade picture, fell by $888 million from July. While emphasizing progress with China on a number of issues, Commerce Secretary William Daley said China's continued refusal to open its huge market to more American goods remained a "major concern" and would be a key topic dur- ing the summit. "Our exports (to China) just aren't growing at the rate they should," Daley tpld reporters at a briefing on the trade figures. "That will not continue without there being a political reaction. And we've tried to stress this repeatedly." , , Proposal would create oversight board, give taxpayers new rights The Washington Post WASHINGTON - The Clinton administration yesterday abandoned its opposition to a congressional plan for a wide-ranging overhaul of the Internal Revenue Service, clearing the way for the proposal to become law as early as next spring. The latest version of the proposal, unveiled yesterday by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Bill Archer (R-Texas) "is now on balance a workable plan and one that we can support," Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said.- Archer's committee is expected to approve the plan today. House and Senate leaders said they anticipate easy passage. Although congressional Republicans were crowing about the White House reversal, Clinton administration offi- cials clearly hoped the agreement would defuse a potentially damaging issue in next year's mid-term congres- sional elections. The plan, which has been the focus of a months-long battle between the administration and Congress, would create an oversight board made up of government officials and private sector experts to review and approve the agency's operations, long-term strategic plans and budget requests. It would also give taxpayers a variety of new rights when dealing with the IRS and would shift the burden of proof from the taxpayer to the agency when disputes reach the courts. The measure would affect taxpayers directly in several ways: it would make it easier for taxpayers to recover costs and damages when the IRS pursues them wrongly; it would make it easier for innocent spouses to obtain relief for tax liabilities created secretly by a spouse or ex-spouse; and it would extend the attorney-client confiden- tiality privilege to accountants and oth- ers authorized to practice before the IRS. The proposal grew out of recom- mendations made by a commission, created by Congress, which spent more than a year studying the IRS in the wake of revelations about the agency's disastrous attempts to mod- ernize its computers and other internal problems. For months, the Clinton administra- tion had strongly opposed certain aspects of the proposal, particularly the oversight board. Treasury Department officials called the board unworkable, and fraught with potential conflicts of interest by board members who might have personal tax agendas or links to large corporations with important tax interests. The White AP PHOTO Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin announced on Capitol Hill yesterday that the Clinton administration would endorse a House bill aimed at restructuring the IRS. House also objected to the original bill's proposal to strip the president of the power to hire and fire the IRS com- missioner and give that authority to the new board. But White House officials said yes- terday that last-minute changes, includ- ing preservationy of the president's appointment power, had made the bill palatable, though they vowed to contin- ue to work for "improvements." At the same time, political strate- gists noted that recent Senate Finance Committee hearings on IRS abuses had tapped into a flood of public resentment about the agency, and that continued administration resistance played into the hands of the Republicans politically. The White House reversal came after administration officials sensed they were losing the debate and Clinton per- sonally consulted with Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), a co-chair of the commission, to try to find a way out of the political box. The official acknowledged that the Republican attacks on the IRS had uncovered legitimate problems that need addressing. "If you scrape away the barnacles of a crusted bureaucracy, you find out the (problems look) pretty much the same whether the Republicans are running it or whether we're running it," he said. But in compromising, the White House hoped to shift the debate away from IRS management. "Then you can have a general global debate on tax reform." the official said. Breakthrough points to electric cars WASHINGTON - Researchers claimed a breakthrough yesterday they said could lead to virtually pollution-free electric cars that drivers could refuel at the corner gas station. No need anymore for big, range-limiting batteries. The power process, using a fuel cell and hydrogen extracted from gasoline, is the latest in a string of technology advances that have surfaced in recent months, all aimed at building cleaner, more efficient car engines. In this version, a team of researchers at Arthur D. Little Co., a Boston-based energy consulting firm, came up with a fuel cell that produces energy by com- bining oxygen and hydrogen from gasoline. The company said it would work with major automakers to develop the idea and estimated there could be com- mercial production of cars using the technology as early as 2005. The fuel cell could produce cars that get up to 80 miles per gallon while cut- ting air pollution by 95 percent, one company official said. And Honda Motor Co. said'this week it has a gasoline engine thatcan compete with'the electrics and cut pol- lution to nearly zero by using addition- al, newly designed catalytic converters. Quayle sets sights on presidency BIRMINGHAM, Ala. -- Plenty of politicians are suddenly itching to Qver- haul the Internal Revenue Service. But Dan Quayle was for tax reform before tax reform was cool, as he is reminding audiences around the country these days. Five years after he and President Ekgbh were turned out of office, Quayle is c ing back. He makes no real effort to-- guise what he's unofficially launched: an all-out try for the presidency. , "I'm clearly thinking about it,"Quayle repeats, with a grin, as he races from appearance to appearance, picking up IOUs from local Republican candidates and recruiting donors for his fledgling political operation. Downsizing on the decline, jobs up at many companies NS AROU1D THE:~~;xx:< x- - RL0~j But 13 percent of 1,200 companies are firing workers NEW YORK (AP) - After years of widespread layoffs, downsizing and job cuts are at their lowest levels this decade, with companies once again hir- ing, according to a nationwide survey released yesterday. That's not to say all jobs are safe., Thirteen percent of the 1,200 compa- nies surveyed by the American Management Association are firing workers, and a third of companies are both firing and hiring. Underscoring the fact that downsiz- ings are hardly a thing of the past, Citicorp announced yesterday it is eliminating 7,500 jobs worldwide over the next 18 months to become more :fficient. Still, the specter of downsizing is receding. Those companies surveyed created an average of 110 new jobs while eliminating 57 in the year ending in June, while their payrolls grew 6.9 percent in same period. "We had to go through a long dark night where there was an emphasis on cost-control, cost-reduction and staff-reduction," said Eric Rolfe Greenberg, director of management studies at the New York-based associ- ation. "Ultimately, companies found To nail the MCAT, knowing the sciences isn't enough. You've got to know the test. At Kaplan we'll teach you both. Our expert teachers have helped more students get into medical school than all other MCAT prep courses combined. So, go with the leader. Call today to enroll. that there was more to doing business than cutting costs." The sweeping job cuts of recent years left few workers unaffected. Nearly 40 percent of companies cut jobs in three or more years since 1990, according to the survey. The changes left even surviving workers with a sense of insecurity - as well as mounting work loads. But things are looking up. Companies reporting job cuts have shrunk to 41 percent this year from 56 percent in 1991, the man- agement association reported. Companies that downsized - or decreased their total work force - fell to 19 percent from 43 percent in the same periods. Some of the same forces spurring job cuts - re-engineering and automation - now are causing hiring, Greenberg noted. For instance, while a new automation system may have prompted the layoffs of less-skilled workers ini- tially, the wider use of automation now demands the hiring of workers with more skills. Technical advances have prompted Xerox, for example, to add 4,000 jobs in the last two years, after cutting 12,000 jobs from 1993 to 1995 from a work force of 97,000. Nationwide, 32 percent of jobs cut in the past year were managers and supervisors, while only 14 percent were professionals and technicians, according to the survey, which focused on companies with revenues of $10 million or more. It had a mar- gin of error of plus or minus 3.5 per- centage points. Even companies that have been in the headlines with announcements of job cuts are still quietly hiring. AT&T, a company practically synonymous with downsizing after its job cuts of the 1990s, has hired 3,000 workers since the end of 1996. Russians teens rank criminal career high MOSCOW - The counterrevolu- tion is complete. Russian teen-agers polled about their career preferences before the collapse of the Soviet Union six years ago prob- ably would have chosen such patriotic jobs as engineers, soldiers and cosmo- nauts. Today they want to be in business as accountants and lawyers and entrepre- neurs. More of them want to be gang- sters and racketeers rather than soldiers and cosmonauts. The All-Russia Center for Public Opinion Studies recently asked 1,000 Moscow high school students, aged about 14 to 17, a revealing question: "What profession do you think is most prestigious?" While making money was clearly important to the new post-Soviet gener- ation -- accountant was in first place, followed by lawyer, banker and busi- nessman -- killer and racketeer were number 18 out of a list of 36. Cosmonaut was in last place in the poll, tied with driver and just below clergyman. Only 0.1 percent of,:the respondents thought being a cosmo- naut was prestigious - or wanted t6 be one. The three top professions were mentioned by about 20 percent of* respondents. ! Cages filed in nursing home killings COPENHAGEN, Denmark - Neighbors of the modern nursing home in downtown Copenhagen considered it an example of the Danish state's humahe and high-quality care for the elderly. But behind the white-stucco facae, a nurse was stealing from patients and injecting some of them with a Mor- phine-based drug, police said yest&r- day. Twenty-two men and women- ages 65 to 97 - died. The nurse, 32, and a 50-year-tld doctor have been charged in the deaths, which have angered and frightened' a country that prides itself on its culture of kindliness. - Compiled from Daily wire reports. 1 -800-KAP-TEST www.kaplan.comi MCAT is. a osee taeao the. .4.....d. 4s ...4k....4of..American Med Coeas I I~n:3 w Ii I a , .7CHGN7( RECORDS I FA~I I I The Michigan Daily (ISSN 0745-967) is published Monday through Friday during the fall and winter terms by students at the University of Michigan. Subscriptions for fall term, starting in September, via U.S. mail are.. $85. Winter term (January through April) is $95, yearlong (September through April) is $165. Oncampus sub- scriptions for fall term are $35. Subscriptions must be prepaid. The Michigan Daily is a member of the Associated Press and the Associated collegiate Press. ADDRESS: The Michigan Daily, 420 Maynard St., Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1327. 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