Bush Proposes Tax Increase!

As Bush’s new negative ads show, the Bush campaign has developed a new way to identify proposed tax increases. The ads say that Kerry plans to raise taxes by $900 billion. Bush’s campaign manager explains how they arrived at this conclusion despite the fact that Kerry has never said he wants to raise taxes by $900 billion:

Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman told reporters in a conference call that the figure is based on estimates of the cost of the Kerry health-care reform package. Kerry has said health-care reforms would form his first major proposal to Congress.

“He said he won’t increase the deficit. That means he’s going to have to pay for it somehow and that’s by increasing taxes,” Mehlman said, adding that Kerry has made other spending proposals as well.

But wait! Look at this!

Bush seeking major increase in missile defense spending

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration is seeking a big increase in spending for missile defense next year, setting the program on course to have a bare-bones system in place by the end of this year and up to 30 interceptors on land and at sea by the end of 2005.

Bush has also “said he won’t increase the deficit.” That means that, following the new Bush campaign logic, any spending increase that he proposes is also equivalent to a proposal to increase taxes. So according to Bush logic, we can now recognize this proposal to increase defense spending for what it really is: a tax increase!

Wow, who knew? I guess I feel a bit relieved, since I’ve believed for quite a while that we need to increase taxes to restore fiscal responsibility — and here Bush is proposing exactly that. In fact, using this new way to identify proposals to increase taxes, I would guess that Bush has probably proposed more tax increases than any other president in history. And all this time I was worried that he wanted to gut government revenues.

Kash