Kerry's Tax And Spend Proposals Will Cost $1 Trillion, Says Bush

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

23 March 2004

US President George W. Bush has claimed that the tax and spending proposals of his Democratic rival John Kerry will increase the nation’s tax burden by over $1 trillion.

Mr Bush’s campaign team alleged on Sunday that Mr Kerry’s pledges would cost the nation around $1.7 trillion over ten years, whilst his tax proposals would only generate an additional $700 billion in revenues, leaving a ‘tax gap’ of about $1 trillion.

Earlier in the month, the Bush campaign aired a television commercial which stated that Kerry’s policies would amount to an effective $900 billion increase in taxation.

The Democrat candidate has pledged to roll back the tax cuts given to wealthy taxpayers under the Bush administration whilst offering tax cuts to lower and middle income workers.

"George Bush's tax policies have cost America's workers 3 million jobs and driven us into the largest budget deficit in the nation's history," stated David Wade, a spokesman for the Kerry campaign, on Sunday.

However, Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlam hit back at the Kerry campaign for its failure to produce a costed budget of its tax and spending proposals. "The president has put out a budget," He said. "We have not seen a budget from Senator Kerry."

Mehlam also argued that Kerry’s spending proposals will cost each household an average of $15,500 over fifteen years.

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