After the June meeting, MIT economists Edwin Kuh (an informal McGovern adviser since 1968) and Lester Thurow began developing McGovern's tax reform proposals. On his own, Weil began looking into the issue of welfare reform, seeking occasional advice from Kuh and Nancy Amaday, a staffer on McGovern's Senate Committee on Nutrition.

Two outside influences spurred his investigation. One was the Harris campaign. The other was a report from campaign fund-raisers that, if McGovern supported or even announced he was considering a welfare reform plan called "Fair Share," a large contribution might be forth-coming from its originator, a White Plains, N. Y. industrialist named Leonard Greene.

Weil sent Kuh a copy of the Fair Share plan and asked him to look it over and show it to members of the June economics advisory group. He says Kuh reported back to him that he had done so and that the group though the plan was "reasonable...even attractive."

Kuh says this is a "lie." He looked over the Fair Share plan but "couldn't figure it out...it was just scraps of paper (to me)" he said. But it looked to him like a "credit income tax" scheme James Tobin had outlined in an article in the Brookings Institution's 1968 Agenda for the Nation. This, he says, is what he told Weil.

THE CREDIT income tax, as Tobin presented it, would serve two functions. It would provide a guaranteed minimum income. And it would constitute a major reform of the tax system.

The scheme would replace the present tax exemptions for dependents with "tax credits"--Tobin discussed using credits of $750--and would replace the present graduated tax scale with a uniform rate of 33 1/3 per cent (rising, possibly, at higher incomes).

The tax credits would provide a guaranteed minimum income to all the poor, including the working poor. The uniform tax rate would prevent "income shifting" between years and between family members to reduce taxes. And the rate used, 33 1/3 per cent, would provide a much greater incentive to work than the 66 2/3 per cent tax rate presently applied to the earnings of those on welfare.

Weil found the Tobin plan appealing, even though it was "represented in the article as being something that's a bit advanced," he said. As he saw it, "there are only two approaches to welfare possible--the one we have now or one where you take the policing out, an automatic system where people are guaranteed a decent income, a plan that encourages them to get a job instead of discouraging them."

Because of the Tobin plan's low tax rate, taxpayers would continue to receive net benefits until their income was far above the poverty level--in fact, more money would go to the non-poor than to the poor. Thus, the "cost," the redistribution involved in the plan, would be quite high.

"I think it's fair to say our line of thinking was...to go the whole way," Weil commented, however. The result was not a program that would obtain quick acceptance by Congress, he said. "But we thought it was important to push for the desirable thing, rather than start out going for something less desirable." This was McGovern's style, a style which suited the political situation at the time.

The proposal Weil eventually put together presented "Fair Share" and a $1000 per person Tobin scheme as two plans which McGovern might adopt if he became President, but committed him to neither.

The proposal's only commitment was to the principle that the government make an annual payment to "every man, woman and child" in the country. This payment, the proposal stated, would replace the present welfare system and would serve to re-distribute income from the top to the bottom--and to many in the middle class.

The methods by which this proposal might be implemented "require full examination by the best economic talent available," the proposal stated. They would receive this examination if McGovern were elected but--it was implied--not before.

The proposal was deliberately inspecific, largely because it raised many questions which could not be answered without extensive computer simulations of the plans in operation. Without doing simulations based on a large sample of individual tax situations, it would not be possible to predict how the plan would actually affect many Americans, and particularly, what apparent anomalies it might create. In California, McGovern learned the hard way how vitally important it was to discover and resolve such anomalies before the plan came under public scrutiny.

Without doing these simulations, it would also be impossible to determine what the proposal would cost. This is work which a President, with the resources of the Federal government at his disposal, can do. But, as Weil said, "It's unlikely that anyone running for President, with all the task forces he can muster, can make these kinds of decisions."