(FORTUNE Magazine) – and Other Matters. Ways and Means members have been pounding away at cutting rates and ending tax breaks . . . But the . . . committee also has voted to create new tax breaks . . . Representative William M. Thomas, . . . for example, proposed that certificates to develop new kinds of ''sexually propagated plants'' be accorded low-rate capital gains treatment. He explained that such a change, which the committee adopted, would put new plants developed by the traditional birds-and-bees method on an equal tax footing with those created by cloning or genetics. Cotton, a . . . product of Thomas's district, is sexually propagated. -- From a news report in the Washington Post.