Bush Camp Attacks Kerry's Spending Plan(but same logic works against Bush)

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/2004/la-na-gop23mar23,1,5794762.story?coll=la-headlines-elect2004


March 23, 2004 Bush Camp Attacks Kerry's Spending Plan -The GOP charges that the senator would increase taxes to pay for a $1.7-trillion agenda. Democrats counter in a day of fiery exchanges.


By Ronald Brownstein, Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — Republicans on Monday significantly escalated their effort to paint John F. Kerry as a big-government liberal, charging he has endorsed a $1.7-trillion spending spree that would demand huge tax increases.<snip>

The charge that Kerry is contemplating massive increases in government spending — and tax increases to pay for it — fleshes out the argument Bush sketched last month in a speech to Republican governors. The president said he sought to increase choice for individuals, in part by allowing them to keep more of their money through lower taxes, while his opponent would "increase the power of politicians and bureaucrats."<snip>

More than half of the new spending that the Republicans attributed to Kerry's programs would come from the Democrat's plan to expand access to healthcare and reduce insurance premiums.<snip>

Democrats also argued that Bush was vulnerable to the same tax-raising charge directed at Kerry because he has not explained how he would pay for large elements of his agenda, such as the long-term cost of rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan and his plan to create individual investment accounts under Social Security.

By all estimates, the Social Security idea "costs well over $1 trillion over the next decade; there was a plan highlighted in the economic report of the president this year that cost more than $1.5 trillion," said Peter Orzsag, a former Clinton economic official now at the Brookings Institution think tank.

Klain and other Democratic strategists said Kerry would welcome a debate over competing fiscal plans because that would focus attention on what could be a key Bush vulnerability. Since Bush took office, federal spending has increased from 18.4% of the economy in Clinton's last year to 20.2% now, a trend the administration blames mostly on the cost of responding to the terrorism threat. <snip>

Please don't stop