Copyright 2000 Journal Sentinel Inc.
Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel
October 22, 2000 Sunday FINAL EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. 11A
LENGTH: 849 words
HEADLINE:
Doing the math behind debate claims;
Transcripts show fudging of numbers by
both candidates
BYLINE: RICHARD W. STEVENSON New York
Times
BODY:
Washington -- In their three debates,
Texas Gov. George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore have waded deep into the
thickets of tax policy and the budget surplus. The numbers they have thrown
around have often been confusing and conflicting -- and sometimes wrong.
An examination of debate transcripts shows several instances in which
the candidates made their points through the selective use of facts, fudging of
details and, yes, fuzzy math.
Argument over the rich: In last week's
debate, Gore used the audience to illustrate his argument that Bush's tax plan
favors the rich.
If all 130 audience members were "dead on in the middle
of the middle class," he said, their combined tax cuts under the Bush plan would
be less than the cut enjoyed by "just one member" of the wealthiest 1% of
taxpayers, which he defined as people making more than $330,000
a year.
Gore's assertion was misleading, if not wrong.
In
assessing the Bush plan, the Gore campaign relies on an analysis by Citizens for
Tax Justice, a liberal-leaning research group that uses a well-respected
computer model.
The group defined the top 1% as people who make
$319,000 or more, with the average being
$915,000.
The average tax cut for members of that group
under the Bush plan would be $46,072, Citizens for Tax Justice
said.
There are a number of credible definitions of middle class. In
this case, the Gore campaign relied on one at the low end of the spectrum -- a
range between $24,400 and $39,300 per
household, with an average of $31,000, which Citizens for Tax
Justice described as the middle 20% of incomes for tax purposes.
The
average tax cut for that group would be $453 under the Bush
plan, the group said. Multiplied by 130, the total is $58,890
-- $12,818 more than the average tax cut for the top 1%. (The
vice president's example would have worked only if there were no more than 101
people in the audience.)
Gore seemed to imply in the debate that his
assertion applied to anyone making more than $330,000 a year.
Asked to explain Gore's statement, campaign aides said he had in mind someone
making $1 million a year.
Discord on low earners: In
the second debate, Bush said that "most of the tax reductions" in his plan would
"go to the people at the bottom end of the economic ladder. "
He was
wrong.
In assessing his plan's effect on different income groups, Bush
relies on an analysis by the non-partisan staff of Congress' Joint Committee on
Taxation.
The analysis shows that in 2005, after the Bush plan would be
fully phased in, it would reduce taxes on households making
$200, 000 or more by $32.2 billion, or 26.8%
of the total tax cut in that year of $120.1 billion.
Households making less than $40,000 would receive
$12.3 billion in tax cuts in 2005, the analysis says, or 10.2%
of the total.
Moreover, the analysis does not consider Bush's proposal
to repeal the federal estate tax. Economists differ about how much of the
benefits of an estate tax repeal would go to
the wealthy, but there is no disagreement that the wealthy would reap most of
the benefit.
Bush has said in all the debates that his plan would
require people at higher income levels to pay a greater share of federal income
taxes.
The Joint Committee on Taxation's analysis shows that households
making $200,000 in 2005 or more would pay 27.4% of total
federal income taxes under Bush's plan, just as they do now. Households making
$100,000 or more would see their share of the total income tax
bill tick up to 25.2%, from 25.1% under current law.
Discord over
spending: Starting in the first debate, Bush said Gore was a big spender --
bigger than any of the three previous Democratic presidential candidates --
whose proposals would bust the budget. And he said electing Gore would mean the
return of big government.
Bush's budget has less of a buffer than Gore's
does. By Bush's own accounting, his budget would use all but
$265 billion of the surplus, and that is without paying for
some of his campaign promises, like an expanded national missile defense system.
Gore says he would set aside $660 billion of the surplus for a
reserve fund and higher levels of debt reduction.
Bush said Gore is
proposing three times as much spending as President Clinton did when he was
running in 1992.
That assertion rests on an analysis by a conservative
research group, the National Taxpayers Union, which concluded that Gore's
spending would total $2.9 trillion in the next decade.
The Gore campaign says it would spend a little over $1
trillion and offer tax breaks of less than $500 billion.
Clinton's 1992 proposals were made at a time of record budget deficits;
Gore's are being made at a time of growing surpluses.
Gore said he had
helped slim the federal bureaucracy through his work on the administration's
Reinventing Government initiative.
Since 1992, the civilian government
work force has fallen by 400,000 people, although nearly three-quarters of the
reduction has been at the Pentagon.
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