In a speech Monday, Vice-President Dick Cheney came out swinging against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry’s tax stances. Apparently, Kerry has voted around 350 times to raise taxes throughout his tenure in the Senate.
Now that’s scary.
Cheney put it into perspective: “That averages to one vote for higher taxes every three weeks for almost two decades.”
Knowing that Kerry’s reputation puts him at odds with Americans expecting tax breaks should he gain the White House this Nov., Kerry recently proposed cutting corporate tax rates from 35 to 33.25 percent.
But Kerry’s proposal does nothing more than to shore up what little support he can expect to receive on taxes while he rolls back the Bush tax cuts to pay for the multitude of government programs he has campaigned on.
Lawrence Kudlow explains:
The Kerry proposal to roll back the Bush tax cuts would raise the after-tax cost and reduce the post-tax investment return on capital by more than 54.5 percent. Taking out the upper-bracket labor-income component — which is still investment capital — the Kerry tax hike would reduce investment incentives by nearly 47 percent and work-effort returns by more that 7.5 percent. A big hit.
Offsetting that, Kerry’s corporate tax cut would raise after-tax returns on corporate income by almost 2.75 percent. But that’s only a tiny amount compared to the overall tax-hike proposal.
And with the expiration of many parts of Bush’s tax cuts Mr. Bush wishes to make permanent, future economic policy is certain to be decided in this year’s presidential election.
But the Kerry camp isn’t taking the challenges well. In a statement, they said the Bush administration “has lost 3 million jobs, created spiraling budget deficits and put the nation in debt for generations to come.”
Forget 9/11. Forget the recession that started in the final quarters of Clinton’s second term. And forget the tech bubble bust. They all had nothing to do with it. Go figure.