December 17, 1994

The White House set out today to sell President Clinton's proposed tax breaks in the face of far grander Republican promises, saying the political test was whether such proposals could be paid for without worsening the deficit -- and insisting that its cuts could be. But senior officials withheld virtually all specifics about what Government programs they would cut in five agencies to help finance the $60 billion package over five years. And they acknowledged that the President's proposed tax credits for children and new deductions for education would have to be phased in, starting at perhaps half their eventual value, before savings would be available to finance them in full.

President Clinton's $60 billion tax cut proposal might have been directed at angry middle-class voters, but it was shaped, at least in part, by concern over how already nervous financial markets would react. And Republican plans can expect similar scrutiny. News analysis, page 10.

The burglars sometimes visit a store beforehand, police investigators say, posing as foreign tourists interested in videotaping a modern supermarket for the folks back home. But they return when the store is closed, pound through the roof with sledgehammers, disable alarm systems and then break open the safe with hammers, crowbars, torches and specialized saws. These are the tactics the police say are being used by crews of burglars -- based in the Bronx and made up of immigrants from Albania and the former Yugoslavia -- that have attacked retail stores up and down the East Coast for the last three years.

In an extraordinary sign of the Russian military's unhappiness with its mission in the rebellious republic of Chechnya, the commander of a tank division halted his advance about 20 miles from the rebel capital today and promised local villagers that he would not go any further. The officer, Maj. Gen. Ivan Babichev, told weeping Chechen women: "It is forbidden to use the army against peaceful civilians. It is forbidden to shoot at the people."

Representative Newt Gingrich, the next House Speaker and newly crowned master tactician, held the 229 other Republican representatives captive in the Capitol's House chamber for two relentless days this week, drilling them on parliamentary minutiae, whipping them through mock debates, exhorting them with inspirational speeches. Ever the strategist, Mr. Gingrich said the object was to prod Congress's perpetual minority into acting, at long last, like a majority party. Ever the showman, Representative-elect Sonny Bono, a California Republican and show-business icon to the slightly paunchy, put it another way.