IPW Daily Report – March 26, 2004
"He [John Kerry] supported a 50-cent-a-gallon tax
on gasoline. He wants you to pay the extra money
at the pump, but he wouldn't even throw in a free
car wash,"
President Bush said.
“Mr. Clarke, in his testimony to the bipartisan
committee investigating security and intelligence
lapses leading to September 11, sharply scolded
President Bush for not preventing the destruction
of the World Trade Center and the attack on the
Pentagon, and for not doing what he should be
doing to punish al Qaeda instead of misadventuring
into Iraq. But it's clear that what really bugs
Mr. Clarke is that the president does not share
Mr. Clarke's estimation of the wit, the erudition
and the wisdom of Richard Clarke.” --
writes Wesley
Pruden, Washington Times.
“Mr. Clarke, the cheri du jour of the elite media,
complains that George W. didn't listen to him.
With his record of accomplishment in a succession
of administrations, the scandal is not that he
wasn't listened to but that somebody persuaded
George W. to keep him in the White House. Since
taking care of bureaucrats has become the first
purpose of government, maybe the president did owe
him something. Somebody should have sent him over
to the motor pool to detail the president's
limousine.” --
writes Wesley Pruden.
“It is only March, but the 2004 Chutzpah of the
Year Award can be safely given out. It goes to
Richard Clarke, now making himself famous by
blaming the Bush administration for Sept. 11 --
after Clarke had spent eight years in charge of
counterterrorism for a Clinton administration that
did nothing.” --
writes Charles Krauthammer.
Roll Call's Ethan Wallison reports that
Rep. Porter Goss said Thursday that Clarke "may
have lied in testimony to his committee, and said
he plans to explore whether Congressional action
on the matter is warranted."
-- ABC’s The
Note writes.
"I don't think the American people believe that a
president would, in a cavalier way, turn his back
on information that could jeopardize the nation,"
Sig Rogich, an
image consultant for President George H.W. Bush,
said regarding Richard Clarke’s accusations.
"Today we have a tax code that does more to reward
companies for moving overseas than it does to
reward them for creating jobs here in America,"
Kerry said in
remarks prepared for delivery at Wayne State
University.
"The tools are in place. Now we need to make sure
to use these tools to make sure that John Kerry is
elected president,"
said DNC
Chairman Terry Mc Auliffe about the party’s $25
million in the bank.
"All of the Democratic opponents he faced during
the primary said that John Kerry's numbers didn't
add up in the primary and they don't add up now,"
said Bush
spokesman Steve Schmidt. "It means a
massive tax increase for middle income families."
"I want to start by saying something nice about
President Bush. Of all the presidents we've had
with the last name of Bush, his economic plan
ranks in the top two,"
John Kerry said.
"They drove us into each other's arms,"
former Texas
Gov. Ann Richards said. "We are so united
that, before their wives got wind of it, Joe
Lieberman and Al Sharpton were on their way to San
Francisco to get a marriage license."
Kerry pushes Jobs agenda
Kerry v Bush: the credibility attacks
Spending the War Chests
* CANDIDATES &
ISSUES:
Kerry pushes Jobs agenda
Sen. John Kerry plans to move discussions back to
jobs by delivering the first of three speeches on
his job creation plans. At Wayne State Kerry will
be rolling out his change in taxation of foreign
held profits by American companies and 'Benedict
Arnold C.E.O.'s'.
Under existing law, U.S. companies do not have to
pay taxes on their foreign income until they bring
it back to the United States. If they keep it
abroad, they can avoid taxes entirely.
Kerry's plan would tax profits from foreign
subsidiaries just like domestic profits and still
allow companies to defer the income earned by
production in a foreign country that serves
foreign markets.
"He is eliminating what is a very clear incentive
to relocate jobs overseas and then keep the
profits overseas," said Kerry economic adviser
Gene Sperling, a former Clinton administration
aide who estimated the changes would affect about
600 U.S. companies.
Kerry’s campaign estimates that the $12 billion in
annual tax increases would offset a cut in
corporate tax rates, to 33.25 percent from 35
percent. This tax cut is expect to go to nearly
all U.S. companies, according to the Kerry
campaign.
Kerry's plan also would expand a proposal for a
manufacturing job tax credit that he first made
during stops in Iowa and New Hampshire to include
industries the Commerce and Labor Departments
determined to be at risk of being outsourced.
Part of Kerry’s plan would be to offer a one-year,
10 percent tax holiday to encourage companies that
are keeping profits overseas to avoid taxes to
bring them back to the United States.
Companies bringing their profits home at this time
would also suffer a loss due to the low value of
the dollar compared to other currencies at this
time.
USA Today covers the issue of the two competing
Bush Kerry job creation plans. The Today story is
not optimistic about Kerry’s plan:
As for the Kerry plan, David Wyss, chief economist
for Standard & Poor's, says the sizable gap in
wages between the USA and many of its
international competitors makes it unlikely that
Kerry's tax policy changes would bolster hiring
here, even with major changes in the tax code.
"Right now, workers in the U.S. cost an average
$28 per hour plus health care and other benefits,
while workers in both China and India come at an
average $2 per hour," he says. "There isn't much
that changing tax rates can do about that."
Another criticism of Kerry's proposals is that
they focus too much on stemming U.S. job losses to
lower-cost workers overseas. Although the
"outsourcing" of U.S. jobs is a potent political
issue, most economists say it's only a small part
of the U.S. hiring slump. On Wednesday, a survey
by the National Association for Business Economics
found that only 9% of 203 member economists saw
foreign trade as a major factor behind the U.S.
job market's problems.
Kerry v Bush: the credibility attacks
Sen. John Kerry’s campaign continues to have a
three-pronged approach in its attack on the
President: jobs and the issue of outsourcing; Iraq
and it hurt the War on Terrorism ; and the
President’s credibility.
Howard Dean on “McNeal-Leaher News Hour” said that
the number one issue in this campaign might very
well be the President’s credibility. When a
President loses his credibility the public will
vote him out of office, Dean said.
Another example of the Kerry campaign credibility
attacks came while President Bush was in Boston,
according to the Washington Times. The President
pointed out that Kerry once supported a 50-cent
raise in gas taxes.
"He supported a 50-cent-a-gallon tax on gasoline.
He wants you to pay the extra money at the pump,
but he wouldn't even throw in a free car wash,"
President Bush said at his fund-raiser in Boston.
According to the Times the Kerry campaign
responded as follows:
The Kerry camp immediately released a carefully
worded statement that said the senator "has never
sponsored or voted for a gas-tax increase of that
magnitude."
"Sen. Charles Robb introduced legislation in 1993
that phased in a 50-cent increase. John Kerry did
not vote for or co-sponsor this bill," according
to the e-mail, titled "Misleading America Again."
But the Bush-Cheney team responded with a release
titled "The Raw Deal," citing a 1994 Boston Globe
article in which Mr. Kerry said a rating by a
budget watchdog group "doesn't reflect my $43
billion package of cuts or my support for a
50-cent increase in the gas tax."
Another credibility attack is to claim that the
President is out of touch with America. The
President while in Massachusetts spoke of his
support for job training. Kerry responded with the
following statement:
"Never has the Bush administration increased the
resources going toward programs for people who
have lost jobs and need retraining to find new
ones," said Kerry campaign spokeswoman Kathy
Roeder.
Look for the Bush campaign to point out that the
Kerry campaign statement isn’t true.
Kerry made the attack personal at the Washington,
D.C. Unity Dinner when he said that the country
deserves a leader who “tells the truth.”
Kerry’s credibility gap seems to be larger than
the President’s. An example is when Kerry
continued to deny that he was in Kansas City in
1971 during a leadership meeting of Veterans
Against the War where plans were discussed to kill
U.S. Senators. He previously claimed to have
already quit the Veterans Against the War group
before its ‘kill U.S. Senators’ Kansas City
meeting, saying he had resigned during the group’s
St. Louis meeting held earlier in 1971. When FBI
files proved Kerry was at the ‘kill U.S. Senators’
Kansas City meeting, Kerry reversed his statement
and brushed it off by saying he had merely
experienced ‘how memory works.’
It seems that discussions of killing U.S. Senators
would be more memorable than that…
Kerry’s charges against the President lying and
misrepresenting his votes have not held up either.
Kerry is in danger of losing his credibility
before the campaign even gets started.
Spending the War Chests
Mr. Bush's campaign has so far spent $15 million
on ads according to the University of Wisconsin
media project.
Senator John Kerry's campaign has spent just less
than $2 million, MoveOn.org has spent $3.6
million, and the Media Fund has spent $5.9 million
on ads, for a combined total of $11.5 million.
Ken Goldstein, director of the project, based at
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said Mr.
Bush's recent set of positive ads "does not begin
to compensate for the barrage of critical
television advertising aimed at the incumbent
president during the Democratic presidential
primaries," when Democrats spent $32.5 million in
17 states and mentioned President Bush negatively
in half of all ads.
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