Competitive Intelligence

Kerry’s Resonating Attack on Bush Economic Policy

I though John Kerry finally reached out to the middle last week with his critique of the President’s economic policies – it really hit home to me, what my friend Mark Dankof would call a “paleo-con” small government conservative. Much better than the sandbox “W is Wrong” argument, Kerry finally started slinging mud like he knows what he’s doing, despite precious few details of his own economic plan for America.

Senator John Kerry lashed out at President Bush's economic record on Wednesday, saying that Mr. Bush had created more excuses than jobs and that in the closing months of his term he could no longer refuse to take responsibility for the failures on his watch.

"His is the excuse presidency: never wrong, never responsible, never to blame," Mr. Kerry said in a speech to the Detroit Economic Club that amounted to his strongest attack yet on the Bush administration's economic policies. "President Bush's desk isn't where the buck stops, it's where the blame begins. He's blamed just about everybody but himself and his administration for America's economic problems."

Mr. Kerry's speech, billed by his campaign as a major economic address, offered no policies beyond what he had already put forth: tax incentives for American corporations to help keep jobs in the United States, a rollback of tax cuts for people who make more than $200,000 a year and a $1,000 child care tax credit for the middle class, among other proposals.

But at a time when Mr. Kerry has pledged to hit harder at Mr. Bush and focus more on domestic policy, he framed his economic argument against the president with hot new rhetoric. Mr. Kerry said that the job losses and economic troubles under Mr. Bush were a result not of bad luck - the recession, the Sept. 11 attacks and the corporate scandals that the president cites in his speeches - but of bad choices.

Mr. Bush's choices, Mr. Kerry said, have consistently been in favor of the rich and the powerful. "He chose and he chose and he chose," Mr. Kerry said. "And every single time his choices made middle-class America pay the price."

In Mr. Bush's America, Mr. Kerry added, "a fireman who works overtime to save money and pay for his kid to go to school actually pays a higher tax rate than a billionaire who just inherited a fortune."

Mr. Kerry was apparently referring to Mr. Bush's 2003 tax bill, in which the top tax rate on dividends and capital gains, a source of most billionaires' income, was lowered to 15 percent. That is a lower rate than would be paid on the overtime of a firefighter who earns $70,000 a year.

The Bush campaign replied that Mr. Kerry was offering up more gloom about America. "He rehashed old, tired ideas of higher taxes, of more regulation and of more government control of people's lives that his own advisers say will not work," said Ken Mehlman, the president's campaign manager, in a conference call.

Mr. Mehlman added that Mr. Kerry had voted 98 times for tax increases totaling $2.3 trillion and had voted 8 times for higher taxes on Social Security benefits.

Mr. Mehlman was apparently referring to a record that is more complex than suggested in the daily charge and countercharge of the two campaigns. In reality, Mr. Kerry voted for one large tax increase, the Clinton tax bill of 1993. Most of the additional income taxes in this bill were imposed on the wealthy, but it did include an increase in the taxes on Social Security benefits for middle-income retirees.

Mr. Kerry also voted against two large tax cuts, the Bush tax bills in 2001 and 2003. Although most of the tax cuts went to the wealthy, the bills included lower taxes for middle-income couples and families. Mr. Kerry favored the middle-class cuts but voted against them in the course of voting against the entire legislation.

Mr. Kerry did cast 98 tax votes, but nearly half of them were not on bills but rather on budget resolutions, measures that set overall tax and spending targets. The total also includes the many times he cast multiple votes on the same bill.

Mr. Kerry delivered the speech, at Cobo Hall in downtown Detroit, accompanied by Robert E. Rubin, the Treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton. In the introduction to his remarks, Mr. Kerry lavished praise on Mr. Rubin and made it clear that if he was elected he would want Mr. Rubin at his side.

Mr. Rubin, he said, is "one of those rare public citizens who has this great ability to move between the public sector and the private sector and keeps his credibility through both." He added that "there are those of us obviously who would love to see him make that transition and move again."

Over all, Mr. Kerry's remarks were greeted with tepid applause, which one of his advisers, Gene Sperling, attributed to what he said were the largely conservative leanings of the economic club. Mr. Sperling, an economic adviser in the Clinton White House, was in Detroit to brief reporters after Mr. Kerry's speech.

With an argument like that, Kerry might even persuade some Bush supporters to stay home on election day, giving him the edge he needs to win – that is, if he can beat that drum without turning off his own more sensitive base, who traditionally find such lowbrow tactics tacky, at best.

- Arik