DOLE RETURNS TO FOCUSING ON ECONOMY.

Byline: Katharine Q. Seelye The New York Times

In an hourlong address Tuesday, Bob Dole stepped up his attacks on President Clinton and signaled that he was returning full-bore to his economic message.

``In every state I visit, every talk show, at every rally I address, I will be saying to the American people that you know how to spend your money better than the government,'' the Republican presidential nominee said to more than 500 people at the Economic Club of Detroit. ``I will be saying that this economy is not good enough, and not on the right track.''

Dole suggested that Clinton's inclination toward ``activists meddling in expansive government,'' as revealed in his failed health care plan, resulted not from his being ``a finger-in-the-wind politician who is waiting for the polls,'' but from a deep-seated, liberal predisposition to tax and spend.

Citing Clinton's 1993 tax increase and his ``pork barrel'' stimulus package, Dole declared: ``These are the actions of an old-style, dyed-in-the-wool, big-spending liberal committed to a government that spends and spends and taxes and taxes.''

And, he warned, ``These are the actions of someone who, once the spotlight of the campaign has turned off, will take every opportunity to increase the size of government even as he decreases the size of your wallet.''

As an example of a tax increase that Dole said lurked in a second Clinton term, he said that Bruce Babbitt, Clinton's Interior secretary, just last week proposed a tax on outdoor equipment, including binoculars and bird seed.

``Remember last week, Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt was roaming around out West?'' Dole said. ``And he thought of another tax. And he ran it up the flagpole, endorsing a federal sales tax on outdoor equipment.''

But Babbitt did not propose this tax. It evolved over the past several years from state environmental and parks officials who said that because their state governments were too strapped for cash to maintain wildlife and conservation projects, they wanted a user fee on outdoor equipment. Hunters have paid such fees on guns and ammunition since the 1930s to help restore wildlife.

Naomi Edelson, the wildlife diversity director for the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, which heads a bipartisan coalition of 1,200 organizations that support the fee, said she informed the Dole campaign a week ago that Dole's characterization of Babbitt's role was not accurate. She said Dole aides asked for more information, which she faxed to them.

``It's not a Clinton administration proposal,'' she said in a telephone interview Tuesday from Washington. ``We know Babbitt has never seen the full proposal. He didn't endorse this list of products. It has nothing to do with the Clinton administration.''

Dole said that while the Clinton campaign has said the fee is not official White House policy, Babbitt's ``real mistake was to let the tax-cat out of the bag before Election Day.''

But whatever the source of the proposal, Dole drew chuckles from his Detroit audience Tuesday as he ridiculed it as an example of the administration's tendency toward excessive taxation.

``If they get their way,'' Dole warned, in a waltz into unscripted terrain, ``you won't even be able to escape the IRS when you're hiking. They'll suddenly be walking along with you, somebody from the IRS, saying, `You having a good time? Have you paid your taxes? Have you fed the birds? Have you looked in your binoculars? If you haven't, you don't have to pay the tax. You don't feed those birds, you're all right.' ''

After spending most of his time lambasting Clinton and his policies, Dole outlined his own economic proposal - including a 15 percent cut in federal income taxes, a $500-per-child tax credit and a halving of the capital gains tax rate from 28 percent to 14 percent - as a sound way to restore economic growth.