A puzzling article in yesterday's Boston Globe:
Dean's tax claims bring skepticism
In his just-published autobiography, ''Winning Back America,'' Howard Dean underscores what has become a longstanding central theme of his campaign. He writes: ''We cut taxes by 30 percent over the lifetime of my administration.'' In Iowa and New Hampshire, his campaign is airing a commercial promoting Dean as a ''fiscal conservative who cut state income taxes -- twice.''
On the campaign's website, Dean is even more specific, saying that his two cuts reduced the state's top income tax rate from 13.5 percent to 9.5 percent.
But an examination of Dean's record as Vermont's governor has found that the bigger tax cut was in fact signed into law by his Republican predecessor, Richard Snelling. In 1991, Snelling signed legislation authorizing higher tax rates that would ''sunset'' two years later. Dean, then lieutenant governor, took over after Snelling died, and the rates dropped automatically at the end of 1993.
I can't make head nor tails out of this article, but it seems highly unlikely that Dean would lie about something so easily checked. Anybody?