Bill Archer, a Texas Republican who in three decades in the House of Representatives became a savvy veteran of budget fights and one of the most passionate and powerful anti-tax crusaders in Washington, died on Saturday at his home in Stanley, Va. He was 98.
The Archer Center, a University of Texas outpost in Washington named for Mr. Archer, announced the death on its website.
In an era of rising conservatism in America, Mr. Archer, who served in Congress from 1971 to 2001, espoused a core philosophy: that government was too big and taxes too high, that both should be cut and simplified, and that Social Security, Medicare and most welfare programs needed to be reformed.
“We must stop measuring compassion by the amount of money the government spends,” Mr. Archer said in 1995 when he became chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, with jurisdiction over all tax measures and most spending on social programs. “We will cut spending, we will cut taxes, we will revolutionize welfare to put America on a better track.”
Representing one of the nation’s wealthiest districts, a Houston suburb that was home to many bankers, corporate executives and oil company stockholders, Mr. Archer never lost an election in a congressional career that began when Richard M. Nixon was president and ended as Bill Clinton was leaving the White House. He won by overwhelming margins and in some years ran unopposed.
At the peak of his power, in his last six years in office, Mr. Archer was the author of virtually all tax legislation considered by the House and was a major influence on bills that set budget appropriations and governed health and welfare programs, although he often took a back seat to Newt Gingrich, his Republican colleague from Georgia and the speaker of the House, in bruising negotiations with the Clinton White House.
In 1997, he was instrumental in the passage of the first big federal tax cut in 16 years, with a framework to balance the budget by 2002. He sponsored or was a co-sponsor of scores of bills over the years to expand free trade, crack down on Medicare fraud, make health insurance portable, expand individual retirement accounts and provide family tax credits of $500 per child.
Mr. Archer was an enthusiastic supporter of the Republican “Contract With America,” the campaign platform of party candidates for Congress in 1994. It called for tax cuts for families with children, working couples, retirees, small businesses and investors with capital gains; reforms in Medicare, Social Security and welfare programs; balanced budgets; and legislation to shrink the size of the federal government.
His ultimate goal, he said, was “to tear out the income tax by its roots and discard it and replace it with a new form of taxation.”
Instead of taxing earnings, he favored a national sales tax of 15 to 20 percent on almost everything Americans bought, except homes. Such a tax, he said, would encourage saving and investment and improve the nation’s competitive position in the world.
Critics have said a consumption tax would fall heaviest on the middle class and the poor because they spend a greater proportion of their income on necessities, while the rich would benefit because they can afford to spend a smaller percentage of their income on the essentials of life — and would avoid the progressively higher tax rates of the income tax.
In any case, scrapping the income tax was politically hopeless in the 1990s (and still is today).
Like many members of Congress, Mr. Archer, a trim, natty lawyer and former businessman, was a millionaire, according to his financial disclosure statements. But unlike most of his colleagues on Capitol Hill, Mr. Archer filled out his own income tax returns every year, and said he sympathized with the millions of Americans who struggled with the nightmarish complexity of the tax code.
Mr. Archer told The New York Times in 1995 that he did not consider himself rich. “No, not really, I don’t,” he said. “I think of myself as someone who has been frugal and saved and tried to provide for his own security and someone who bore the responsibility of putting five kids through college.”
William Reynolds Archer Jr. was born in Houston on March 22, 1928, to William Sr. and Eleanor (Miller) Archer. His father prospered in the livestock feed business.
After graduating in 1945 from St. Thomas High, an all-male Roman Catholic prep school in Houston, Mr. Archer attended Rice University, then transferred to the University of Texas at Austin, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration in 1949 and a law degree in 1951.
Mr. Archer was in the Air Force during the Korean War from 1951 to 1953, rising to the rank of captain.
In 1953, he married Patricia Moore. They had five children, Richard, William Reynolds III, Sharon, Elizabeth and Barbara, and were divorced in 1981. In 1983, he married Sharon Sawyer, who had two sons by a previous marriage, Scott and Shannon. His wife and children survive him, along with 19 grandchildren and 26 great-grandchildren.
Mr. Archer was the president of Uncle Johnny Mills, the family feed business in Houston, from 1953 to 1961. From 1955 to 1962, he was a councilman and the mayor pro tempore of Hunters Creek Village, an affluent suburb of Houston. In 1967, he was elected to the first of two two-year terms in the Texas House of Representatives. He switched from the Democratic to the Republican Party in 1969.
In 1970, he was elected to Congress from the Seventh District in Texas with almost 65 percent of the vote, succeeding George H.W. Bush, the future president, in the traditionally Republican seat. He was re-elected 14 times, and his vote share never dropped below 79 percent. He did not seek re-election in 2000.
After leaving Congress in early 2001, Mr. Archer became a lobbyist in Washington and a senior policy analyst for PricewaterhouseCoopers. In late 2002, he was said to be under consideration to replace Paul H. O’Neill as Treasury secretary under President George W. Bush, but the post went to John W. Snow.
Mr. Archer insisted that cutting taxes was not about political expediency.
“It’s a matter of principle,” he said in 1999, “to return excess tax money in Washington to the families and workers who sent it here.”
