Bush Campaign Lies
Monday, March 08, 2004
Bush Campaign Lie #5: John Kerry 'has plans for those tax cuts. He wants to take them away.'
This is what Bush told a crowd at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on March 3, 2004. Bush has enacted a number of tax cuts, so there's some ambiguity about which tax cuts he means. However, since he mentioned 'the largest tax relief since Ronald Reagan' in the same context, it's safe to assume he meant that Kerry would repeal most, if not all of the cuts passed, especially the huge income tax cuts.
However, whether you want to count the number of people affected by the cuts or the number of actual tax codes changed, Bush's statement is still a lie. Kerry has said he will eliminate income tax cuts for people with incomes over $200,000. All other income tax cuts would remain in force, and in fact Kerry would push for additional tax credits for college, and tax cuts for veterans. He has also promised payroll tax relief (most conservatives act as though the payroll tax doesn't exist) , and specifically promised to leave Bush's increased child tax credit and child care credit in place.
Kerry has also said he will 'reform' the Estate Tax, but it's not clear what that means. To date, there are no specifics on his web site. Most likely, it means a partial rollback of the Bush cuts.
Kerry is much tougher on corporations. He would eliminate loopholes and provisions which provide incentives for 'offshoring' --- laying off workers at home and contracting their jobs out to overseas firms. He has also promised to renew the tax to underwrite the superfund program, so that corporate polluters would bear the cost of cleaning up their mess.
Of course, anyone who's really studied the numbers knows that the winner of this fall's election will almost certainly have to raise taxes no matter what he promises on the campaign trail --- but that's another issue.
