Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton proposed tax cuts of up to $1,000 a year on Tuesday to encourage millions of working-age families to open personal retirement accounts, according to The Associated Press. The senator said the program would be paid for through higher estate taxes. At a cost of $20 billion-$25 billion a year, the plan is Clinton's largest domestic proposal other than her plan for universal health insurance. The Republican National Committee criticized her level of spending. «The level of recklessness in Senator Clinton's spending proposals is only eclipsed by the cost of the programs and the destructive effect they will have on our economy and taxpaying families,» said RNC spokesman Danny Diaz. Clinton said less than half the families in the United States have retirement savings accounts and those who have them are not saving enough. She said she often meets people working even into their early 80s because they do not have enough savings. At the same time, Clinton said she has given up another idea for a savings incentive _ giving every baby born in the United States a $5,000 account to pay for college or a first home. Instead, she said, her plan for what she called «American Retirement Accounts» will provide «universal access.» She outlined a program in which the government would provide a «matching refundable tax credit _ dollar for dollar _ for the first $1,000 of savings by every married couple making up to $60,000 a year.» Families with incomes of up to $100,000 would receive a smaller tax break. Higher income earners who do not have employer-sponsored plans could participate, but they would not receive tax breaks. Clinton proposed freezing the estate tax at projected 2009 levels to pay for the tax cuts. Her campaign said that would mean estates of more than $7 million per couple would be subject to taxation. Clinton's campaign said that for every $7 million estate that gets taxed, at least 5,000 families would receive the matching funds. The retirement account proposal would be designed for adults of working age and not open to children, but there is no requirement that people work to participate.
