Kerry, Cheney spar over economy, taxes
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“This administration has one economic policy for America — 3 million jobs lost and driving gas prices towards $3 a gallon,” the presumptive Democratic nominee told students at a jobs training center in Sacramento.
Hours after Cheney called him “one of the most reliable pro-tax votes in the Senate,” Kerry delivered a sharp rebuke, faulting the Bush administration for waging a campaign of “half-truths.”
“They found Dick Cheney in an undisclosed location and brought him out to attack me,” Kerry said at the start of a town hall meeting at the Charles A. Jones Skills & Business Education Center. “That seems to be his designated role, not to create jobs, but to attack John Kerry.
“They are running a campaign in March of mid-October desperation,” said the four-term Massachusetts senator.
Two weeks ago, Kerry and Cheney engaged in a cross-country, rhetorical fight over national security and the Democrat’s credentials to be commander in chief. On Monday, they sparred over taxes and the economy.
Kerry is on a two-day campaign swing through four California cities, where he is raising money and talking to voters about the need for jobs. He raised about $3 million Monday night at a fund-raiser in San Francisco with 1,000 donors, according to Kerry’s California finance co-chairman John Roos. Fund-raisers are also planned Tuesday in San Diego and Los Angeles.
While Kerry blames Bush for rising unemployment, Bush’s campaign portrays Kerry as a habitual tax-raiser.
Cheney said Kerry had voted for higher taxes some 350 times in his Senate career and was likely to seek huge tax increases to help pay for nearly $1 trillion in his spending proposals.
“That averages to one vote for higher taxes every three weeks for almost two decades. At least the folks from Massachusetts knew who was on the job,” Cheney told a receptive audience at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Cheney’s biting criticism was an attempt by President Bush’s re-election campaign to shore up the Republican’s standing on handling the economy. Kerry has tried to outflank Bush on tax cuts in recent weeks, promising to lower corporate tax rates while arguing that he and the president agree on the need to extend some personal income tax cuts due to expire this year.
Cheney questioned Kerry’s commitment to extending several of those tax cuts: an increase in the child tax credit; tax reductions for some married couples who would pay more than they would as individuals; and an expansion of the bottom 10 percent tax bracket. Kerry has said he would keep those tax cuts in place.
Cheney said Kerry voted against creating the new 10 percent bracket; against repealing the inheritance tax; against cutting taxes on dividend income; and against raising the amount of investment expenses that businesses can write off.
“He has given the usual assurances that in those first 100 days he’s planning, only the wealthiest Americans can expect higher taxes,” Cheney said. “But voters are entitled to measure that campaign promise against Senator Kerry’s long record in support of higher taxes for every income group.”
Kerry said he voted against Bush’s tax cuts for wealthy Americans because the country could not afford them. He voted for a Democratic alternative that would have given tax cuts to the middle class.
Kerry would repeal cuts for Americans who earn more than $200,000 a year to pay for deficit reduction, middle class tax relief and health care.
“Let’s say it once loudly and clearly, and I hope the vice president and the president hear it and I hope they will for once stop misleading Americans and tell Americans the truth,” Kerry said. “Here’s the truth — under my plan, 98 percent of Americans will get a tax cut at the federal level from John Kerry’s administration.”
Bush plans to give speeches on the economy this week in the electoral battleground states of West Virginia and Wisconsin.
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Associated Press Writer Tom Raum in Washington contributed to this report.