When the Bush campaign first started throwing around the “350 tax increases” nonsense earlier this year, the estimable Michael Kinsley explained:
The best way to see the absurdity of saying that John Kerry voted for higher taxes 350 times is to apply Bush’s madcap logic to Bush himself. Every year, in the president’s budget, there is a table called “Effect of Proposals on Receipts.” It lists the president’s proposed changes in the tax rules and how they will affect government revenues for various periods up to 15 years. Most of Bush’s proposals will cost revenues, obviously. But in the four fiscal years 2002-2005, Bush has proposed 63 actual “revenue enhancers,” as his father used to call them.
In other words, to use Bush’s standards, he raises taxes all the time. Kinsley pegged the number at about 16 “tax increases” a year, which would total 320 if he stayed in Washington for 20 years (Kerry’s current tenure).
But as Jonathan Chait noted this morning, Kinsley was actually being overly generous to Bush. Indeed, the president recently raised taxes 63 times in a single day.
When Bush signs the big corporate tax bill passed this week by the Republican Congress, he will be approving 63 different tax increases with a single stroke of the pen.
Revenue provision B 8, for example — “Disallowance of certain partnership loss transfers with partner loss limits for transfer of interest in electing investment partnerships” — might not be great fodder for a Kerry campaign commercial, but a tax increase it most definitely is.
You may be thinking, “Wait. I thought that bill was a huge giveaway of tax cuts to special interests.” And you’re right — it is. The point is that any tax bill, even a big giveaway, is going to be a rococo combination of tax increases and decreases. That’s one reason Bush’s “98 tax increases” jab at Kerry is so dishonest.
It’s fun playing with numbers, isn’t it? KE04 can do it, too.
Meanwhile, Kerry’s campaign has a detailed list of 642 Kerry votes to reduce taxes. (Maybe Bush should be painting Kerry as a crazed tax-cutting zealot totally unconcerned about fiscal responsibility.)
Meanwhile, Dick Cheney as a member of Congress from Wyoming voted to raise taxes 144 times. If 98 tax-hike votes make Kerry a far-out liberal, than Cheney would have to be placed somewhere in the ideological vicinity of Che Guevara.
But, as usual, the problem is not just statistical games; it’s Bush’s insistence on deceiving people.
If Bush had merely said that Kerry was more likely to raise your taxes, at least the accusation would be meaningful and plausible. After all, Kerry did vote for the last two major tax increases, in 1990 and 1993, and he openly plans to restore the top tax bracket to where it stood under Clinton.
But the Bush philosophy seems to be: Why level an honest accusation when a dishonest one is nearer to hand?
And, after having been busted trying to trick people, won’t the Bush campaign stop using the debunked claim? Oh wait, no I remember: they know no limits; they have no shame.