During a recent visit to the office of one of the Senate's more thoughtful and influential Democrats, I was told by the senator's legislative director: "The Democrats' first priority in this Congress is a middle-class tax cut. Now let's move on to the second priority: if s a middle-class tax cut. Then there's the third priority: a middle-class tax cut."

For a decade, Democrats have been badgered as the tax-and-spend party that ached to put its hand in your pocket and take some of your hard-earned cash. Many Democrats yearn for the times when they appeared as champions of the average family, as they did during the fall 1990 budget clash when they fought off clumsy White House efforts to shift tax increases from the rich to the middle class.