Bush Cites the Cost Of Tax-Cut Repeal
There's a more substantial article in the WaPo, discussing Bush's planned strategy of painting all the Democratic candidates as tax-raisers. Naturally, as the leading outspoken opponent of the Bush tax cuts, Dean is drawing special attention from Bush - there is a very critical section that hints at this while discussing Dean's recent Meet The Press appearance:
It is to the WaPo's credit that they do mention that income groups largely unaffected by Bush's tax cuts were omitted from the analysis. That selective filtering is expected when you ask the Administration for budget data to confront an opponent of the Administration with on network television.
It speaks very poorly to Tim Russert's "independence" that he would solicit data from a partisan source. If he were interested in honest debate, there would have been an honest accounting of the cost of Bush's tax cuts, but Russert seems more content to play Administration mouthpiece. We can safely label him as spin-free as Bill O'Reilly.
UPDATE: Looks like Russert has played RNC stooge many times before.
UPDATE 2: The drama plays out according to the script. The New York Times had a predictably harsh assessment of Dean's MTP performance.
Howard Dean, a Democratic presidential candidate and former Vermont governor, was confronted with the Treasury Department figures on NBC's "Meet the Press" yesterday. He said they do not account for increases in property taxes because of cuts in federal services and shortfalls in federal aid to education.
"The real effect of the Bush tax cuts has actually been to raise taxes on most middle-class people and to cut their services," Dean said.
The research was prepared at the request of "Meet the Press," NBC and Bush officials said. The analysis does not include single people or lower-income couples, two groups that benefit little from Bush's cuts. Four of the examples involve married couples with one or two children making $40,000 to $75,000 a year, and the other two concern spouses who are both age 65.
It is to the WaPo's credit that they do mention that income groups largely unaffected by Bush's tax cuts were omitted from the analysis. That selective filtering is expected when you ask the Administration for budget data to confront an opponent of the Administration with on network television.
It speaks very poorly to Tim Russert's "independence" that he would solicit data from a partisan source. If he were interested in honest debate, there would have been an honest accounting of the cost of Bush's tax cuts, but Russert seems more content to play Administration mouthpiece. We can safely label him as spin-free as Bill O'Reilly.
UPDATE: Looks like Russert has played RNC stooge many times before.
UPDATE 2: The drama plays out according to the script. The New York Times had a predictably harsh assessment of Dean's MTP performance.
Comments