Bush Campaign Lies
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Bush Campaign Lie #25: Kerry Flip-Flopped On Small Business Income Taxes
This is the 15th example of the Bush campaign trying to prove that Kerry flip-flops. Of course, what proof there is here is predicated entirely on Kerry's Senate voting record, and we all know how easy it is to cherry-pick votes to give a distorted view about what a senator believes.
In this particular case, the Republicans only have one shred of evidence to prove that Kerry ever opposed tax relief for small businesses, his vote on Senate amendment 246 in the first session of the 103rd Congress. This amendment appears to have been written explicitly to provide fodder for smears such as this one. Get a load of the stated purpose of the amendment:
"TO SHIELD SMALL BUSINESSES AND FAMILY FARMS FROM PRESIDENT CLINTON'S PROPOSED TAX ON THE WEALTHY. UNDER THE AMENDMENT , PROPRIETORSHIPS, PARTNERSHIPS, AND SUBCHAPTER S CORPORATIONS WOULD BE EXEMPT FROM PRESIDENT CLINTON'S PROPOSED INCREASE IN THE MARGINAL INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAX RATES . . . ."Actually, that's just an excerpt, but you get the idea. The thing is, nowhere in the amendment is there specific language pertaining to small businesses or farms. The amendment actually contains 54 lines stipulating spending reductions in the concurrent budget resolution for the years 1994-1998, and nothing else. The amendment was brought to the floor, a motion was immediately made to table it, and it was tabled on a party-line vote without further discussion.
It's obvious that no one took this amendment seriously; it was just a cynical attempt by a cynical Republican (Phil Gramm) to force Democrats, then in control of a Senate, to vote against a bill which ostensibly offered tax relief to farms and small businesses, but in reality would have just trimmed government spending a bit. And only a cynical, lying campaign would act as if this was a serious attempt at tax relief, and use it against their opponent now.
On the other hand, when a serious effort at small-business tax relief came along (like S. Amendment 525 in the same session), Kerry supported it.
