Quayle urges family tax cuts

By Eun Lee Koh, Globe Correspondent, June 29, 1999

WASHINGTON -- Returning to his theme of family values, former vice president Dan Quayle proposed yesterday steps that would allow more working parents to stay at home with their children.

The Republican presidential hopeful said parents do not spend as much time with their children as they would like because high taxes and living costs drive both parents to work.

"All we should ask is that parents be allowed to follow their hearts," Quayle said in a speech at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "The problem is that millions of mothers and fathers don't feel like they have a choice at all."

To lighten the financial burden on families, Quayle recommended reducing income taxes by 30 percent and ending "antifamily" tax codes.

Quayle also proposed extending tax credits for day care to parents who stay home with their children. He recommended that workers who buy health insurance because their employers do not provide coverage be able to deduct the cost from their taxes.

Quayle called for changes in education, such as more charter schools, low-income scholarships, and teacher tenure reform, pushing for "respect and responsibility" to be added to the "three R's of reading, writing, and arithmetic."

He urged an end to "bias against stay-at-home moms," saying "dollar power" should not be attached to the work that women do as mothers.

"Every mother is a working mother. The term 'working mother' is redundant. It's sort of like 'compassionate conservative,' " Quayle said, taking a jab at Governor George W. Bush of Texas, the Republican presidential front-runner, a self-described "compassionate conservative."

Quayle urged employers to grant parents more flexible work hours.

"The worst off are single mothers, who have to carry all of the responsibilities on their own," said Quayle, who slammed the television character Murphy Brown in 1992 for becoming a single parent.