Thanks to DailyHowler.com:
Annenberg's factcheck website has posted a story on Kerry's vote to increase taxes 350 times.
Surprise, surprise, it's a lie.
A summary:
Most of the votes were either against tax decreases, to reduce the size of tax decreases or to leave taxes unchanged.
Link here.
Michael Kinsley of Slate shows that using the same logic, Bush has proposed "tax increases" 63 times. Link here.
From factcheck:
The Bush lists of 379 votes is padded with scores of votes Kerry cast against tax decreases (which would leave taxes unchanged, not higher), votes to reduce the size of proposed tax cuts (which would leave taxes lower, though not as much lower as proposed), and "votes for watered-down, Democrat `tax cut' substitutes" (which often proposed to distribute the benefits of tax cuts farther down the income scale than Republican proposals). Thus the Bush campaign counts some votes for tax cuts as votes for "higher taxes."
Among the votes the Bush campaign documents count as votes for "higher taxes" are the following:
A 1985 vote to offset a proposed increase in Medicare premiums by preventing the tax on cigarettes from dropping to 8 cents a pack from 16 cents, as it was scheduled to do. Taxes would have remained at 16 cents a pack.
A 1986 vote against a non-binding resolution to express the "sense of the Senate" that hazardous-waste "superfund" cleanup shouldn't be paid for by a broad-based tax on manufacturers, but by some unspecified alternative source. Taxes would have remained the same.
A 1987 vote against repealing a "windfall profits" tax on oil. Taxes would have remained the same.
A 1989 vote to sustain a Democratic filibuster against a proposed cut in the capital-gains tax. Taxes would have remained the same.
Obviously, the Bush administration will do anything to get re-elected (except the right thing). W probably learned this technique from his father, who used it against Clinton.
Can they get any lower?
