"Dean Finds Religion on Taxes" by Scott Lehigh, Boston Globe

[flpoljunkie]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/01/09/dean_finds_religion_on_taxes?mode=PF

Dean finds religion on taxes

By Scot Lehigh, 1/9/2004

WHEN IT COMES to middle-class tax relief, Howard Dean find himself in the sort of situation any doctor should recognize as impossibly contradictory. He's a little bit pregnant.

But an honest look at the Bush tax cuts shows that they delivered significant benefits to working- and middle-class families, particularly those with children.

Here are figures from the well-respected Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center: 31.5 percent of joint filers -- that is, married couples -- got a tax break of between $2,001 and $5,000. Another 18 percent got a break of between $1,201 and $2,000. In all, 54 percent of married couples got a tax break of $1,001 to $5,000. Because some tax relief was targeted to families with children, they got a larger benefit: 40 percent saw a tax break of between $2,001 and $5,000, another 30 percent got a cut of $1,201 to $2,000.

Although Dean's Wednesday statement made it seem as though he had always planned to offer a tax relief plan during the presidential campaign, that isn't the way the Vermonter sounded when he was at the Globe.

After Dean mentioned that "in the end, we're going to have some approach" to middle-class tax relief, he was asked when. "Not for a long time," he replied. "You need to balance the budget. You can't be giving tax cuts if you can't balance the budget."

...more...

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Dean is going to have to make clear where he stands on tax cuts for the middle class. Trippi said on "Inside Politics" yesterday that Dean would be releasing his tax reform plan in "weeks or months". This ploy will not work.

[blm]

1. Dean has conflicting statements now on EVERY major issue

that he used to attack the other candidates as Bushlite.

He will get KILLED in the general with all of his inconsistent remarks for being unprincipled on his own positions and disingenuous in his attacks on others.

Rove will not spare him the negative ads the way the other Dems do out of pure lack of will to run those ads against a fellow Democrat.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

2. Yep.

(nods head, then shakes it) It's too predictable.

[windansea]

3. the weathervane campaign