It is difficult to figure what Dean will do, as what he has done is a bit different than what is saying he will do. He has opposed income tax cuts, and opposed progressive tax increases as a means oto get rid of budget deficits and avoid cutting social and health care programs:
Progressives call for higher taxes for rich
January 25, 2002
By JACK HOFFMAN
Vermont Press Bureau
MONTPELIER — Vermont Progressives renewed their call Thursday for higher taxes on the wealthy in order to avoid some of the budget cuts that Gov. Howard Dean outlined earlier this week.
The Progressives, with support of a couple dozen Democrats and one Republican, proposed two new income tax surcharges. Taxes would go up 12.5 percent on taxable income between $43,000 and $158,000. On taxable income above $158,000, taxes would be increased 25 percent.
Taxable income is the amount left after personal exemptions and deductions have been subtracted from wages, business earnings and other types of income...
The Progressives said their proposal was designed to mirror the surcharges adopted during that last budget crisis, but they have not proposed an expiration date for the new surcharges.
Dean reiterated his opposition to raising the income tax shortly after the Progressives unveiled their tax plan. Dean contends Vermont’s marginal income tax rate — that is, the top rate paid by those in the highest income brackets — already is too high.
http://timesargus.nybor.com/Legislature/Story/41293.htmlSenate adds money to budget, angers Dean
May 9, 2002
By ROSS SNEYD The Associated Press
MONTPELIER — Senators passed a 2003 state budget Wednesday that the governor made clear he would veto if it ever reached his desk.
Just hours after an angry Gov. Howard Dean leveled a series of charges about how irresponsible he believed the Senate, controlled by his fellow Democrats, was being, senators did precisely what he warned them not to do.
They restored money to a pharmaceutical assistance program that he had slated for elimination, redirected some money to cities and towns to help pay for education, and passed the budget by a 21-8 roll-call vote.
http://timesargus.nybor.com/Legislature/Story/46513.htmlThe state was in a fiscal crisis at the time, working its way out of the biggest budget deficit in its history. Then-Gov. Richard Snelling had pushed a series of temporary tax increases and budget cuts through the Legislature and Dean took up that austerity plan as his own.
To the anger of more liberal members of his own party, he insisted that the tax increases be rolled back on schedule and then went on to work for additional tax cuts later in his tenure.
By the same token, though, he also supported raising taxes — as long as it wasn’t the income tax — when school funding crises and other issues arose that required it.
http://www4.fosters.com/News2003/May2003/May_19/News/reg_vt0519a.aspMeet Howard Dean
The Man from Vermont is Not Green (He's Not Even a Liberal)
by MICHAEL COLBY
For Vermonters who have seen Howard Dean up close and personal for the last eleven years as our governor, there's something darkly comical about watching the national media refer to him as the "liberal" in the race for the Democratic nomination for president. With few exceptions in the 11-plus years he held the state's top job, Dean was a conservative Democrat at best. And many in Vermont, particularly environmentalists, see Dean as just another Republican in Democrat's clothing...
And nowhere are the tall tales of Dean's liberalism more off the mark than when the Dean team begins to gush about his environmental record.
"EP under Governor Dean meant Expedite Permits, not Environmental Protection," proclaims Annette Smith, the director of Vermonters for a Clean Environment.
Smith is no stranger to Dean's environmental record, having tangled with the Dean administration on everything from the OMYA Corporation's mining to pesticide usage on Vermont's mega-farms. When Smith learned that Dean was holding a press conference at the Burlington Community Boathouse last week to celebrate his eco-legacy, she fired off emails to Vermont environmentalist calling for a protest of the event and wondering if they were "going to let Governor Dean ride out on his white horse of environmental leadership?"
http://www.counterpunch.org/colby02222003.htmlDean also was on good terms with Vermont's business community - a relationship some considered too cozy. "His top advisers were all money people, brokers and bankers," said Ready, a regular Dean adversary when she served in the Legislature.
While Dean was instrumental in preserving hundreds of thousands of acres of open space, critics say he was too willing to capitulate to developers and allow growth that contributed to sprawl and the pollution of Lake Champlain, Vermont's natural gem.
"If the question was enticing new business in the state, giving them what they wanted or needed in terms of permits, locations, you could pretty much predict Howard would come down on the side of what business wanted, even if meant sprawling development," said Patrick Parenteau, a law professor at Vermont Law School and a former state environmental commissioner.
http://www.cmonitor.com/stories/news/recent2003/0713%5Fdeanvermont%5F2003.shtmlMedicaid cuts will affect thousands of Vermonters
January 23, 2002
By DAVID MACE
Vermont Press Bureau
MONTPELIER — Tens of thousands of Vermonters would see their state health care benefits rolled back or cut off completely under Gov. Howard Dean’s proposed budget, which seeks to wring $16.5 million in savings from Medicaid.
In an effort to curb costs in a rapidly expanding part of the social services budget, Dean is proposing to require many people who got coverage under his expansions of Medicaid programs to pay for a greater share of their health care.
http://timesargus.nybor.com/Legislature/Story/41169.htmlTHis is of course, the point of view of those who had to deal with Dean on issues such as income taxes, or the environment, and Dean feels that environmentally, he struck a balance between , business and the environment.
And his fiscal conservatism led him to oppose things like income taxes to avoid cutting programs, proposing less reliable taxes, like consumption taxes, taxes on cigarettes. While Vermont had an income tax, while Vermont was in Deans hands, taxes became a bit more regressive, as revenues were largely raised through property taxes and a number of consumption taxes, sales tax and the like, and while Vermont had a moderately fair tax system, as compared to the nation as a whole, under Deans fiscal care, the poor and middle class began to have to bear la larger portion of the states fiscal burden.
Also, part of his solution to balancing a looming deficit in 2002, was to make those receiving medicaid bear higher costs for recieving medical services, rather than progressively raise incxome taxes.
Again, if you feel that it is better to make the wealthy pay a slightly higher rate of income tax in order to preserve social programs, rather than have those receiving the services, pay a rather large portion of their own income in order to receive services, then Denas fiscal actions may not appeal to you. Among Deans recommendations was to increase the medicaid co-payment for a doctors visit from 2 dollars to five dollars, which does not seem like much, but is a sixty percent increase, and to the poor, the disabled, the poor elderly this can be a large burden. Another recommendation was to require a 25 dollar charge for emergency room visits to those on medicaid, increases in prescription costs to medicaid recipient. Those most needy were required to bear the burden of the deficits under the fiscal conservatism practiced by Dean, who also greatly resisted the idea that those who are better able to bear the cost of government and government programs should bear them...
Again, if you feel that the environment can be sacrificed to some degree in order to accomodate businesses, then this might be acceptable to some people, and not to others.
Probably the best way to determine how well Dean as a candidate suits you, you should ask yourself how you would characterize youself politically. Progressive, conservative, liberal, moderate. And then look a things Dean has actally done, what he has supported, what he has said he would not support, what he threatened to veto, adn so on, rather than look at his own campiagn sites or his ownslant on what he did. Just examine what he did and determine if this is someting you are comfortable with. Many people are making a big deal about two stances taken by the other candidates on things like the October Resolution, and the Partiot Act, and using these two votes to characterize or demonize a candidates entire career. They are also interpreting Deans representation of the October Resolution as a vote for war, or as a blank check fior war as truth, when this is merely their opinion, and has no basis in legal or constitutional law. Read the act yourself and then determine if it offers a blank check. A suit against the Bush administration in February,2003, used the act as a basis to try to get a federal district court in Massachusetts to of order an injunction to prevent Bush from using force in Iraq, as the act is held in this case to require that U.N. authorization is necessary before Bush can use force.
There is one thng that Kerry said at the town meeting in Iowa about supporting him, that applies to every candidate. Kerry said that no one should support him because of the things he says while running for president, but that it is far more imporatant that those who are trying to decide who they will support should look at his entire career in public office and public service and base their support on hi record over all of his career.
This is a very good way to choose a candidate, probably the best way.
Not fire in the belly. Sometimes fire in the belly is just heartburn.
I guess it really comes down to how you feel about such things. Whether you feel that this kind of fiscal conservatism, balancing a budget by cutting services to those who can least afford to have them cut, when there are other alternatives available, even if that alternative may be a tax hike. A fiscal conservative may be able to live with themselves and the consequences of cutting taxes and cutting programs, but a social liberal would usually not be comfortable with resorting to such an economic philosophy.
There is a difference between fiscal responsibility, and fiscal conservatism.
If you consider yorself progressive you might check out the Vermont Pogressive Party's web site. Many people in Vermont left the democratic party for the same reasons that Dean supporters claim they reject the DLC. Many Vermont Dems turned to the Progressive party as a result of what they considered Deans extreme conservatism and his giving in to the Vermont Republican party and its platform...
Odd, in recent posts I see Dean suporters crowing about Deans Republican supoprt, yet they choose Dean because he states the other candidates ahd the DLC allowed Republicans to go to far and that they have not been vocal enough in opposing the Republican take over of govenrment.
Strange that the most conservative of candidates, the only cnadidate whi has formal republican organizations which were established to support him in his campaigns for governor, A Republicans for Dean" state organization. Ano now a national Republicans for Dean organization...
I cannot imagine a "Republicans for Kerry" organization, or for Kucinich, or even for Lieberman.
Could you. Would you.
All ypu really need to do is decide exactly how much more conservatism you are willing to stand, and then your choice may bee clearer.
One of the mot insightful articles I have read indicated that some people who lived in Vermont while Dean was governor, and those who had to fight with him over legislation, budgets adn programs are saying "Howard, we hardly knew ye":
SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. - As Vermont governor, Howard Dean was known as a buttoned-down and bottom-line chief executive. He fought higher taxes, cut programs over the cries of fellow Democrats and often sided with business when the choice was jobs versus the environment.
Which explains why many people back home scarcely recognize Howard Dean the presidential candidate, who has stirred liberals across the country with his blunt talk and passionate antiwar speeches.
"A lot of us laugh and say, 'Howard, we hardly knew you,' " said Elizabeth Ready, the state auditor and a liberal Democrat. Added Bob Sherman, a Democratic lobbyist, "The Howard Dean I see running for president is a lot different than the Howard Dean who . . . governed Vermont. He was a moderate."..
To many people in Vermont, the episode captured the consummate Howard Dean, a governor who focused on a few issues - health care for children, a balanced budget, paying down debt - and pursued them with few distractions.
"He was very much middle of the road, not at all amenable to most pressure groups," said Philip Hoff, a liberal Democrat who served as the state's governor for six years in the 1960s. Apart from Dean's health care program, Hoff said, "I looked on him more as a referee than an instigator of new ideas."
But if people like Hoff are bemused by Dean's reputation outside Vermont, they are quite familiar with his direct, let-the-chips-fall manner of speaking. As governor, he once accused lawmakers of "living in la-la land" for proposing a budget he deemed too costly. In 1993, he derided welfare recipients, saying if they "had any self-esteem, they'd be working." He later apologized for the remark.
http://www.cmonitor.com/stories/news/recent2003/0713%5Fdeanvermont%5F2003.shtmlMuch more is known about Kerry than Dean. As the governor of a small state, that has been little in the news, most democrats know little, or nothing of Deans record, so their has bveen little opportunity for democrats who are trying to decide who they will choose in 2004 to run against Bush. That will probably change as the media begins to examine Dean more closely, as the primaries draw closer, and other candidates begin to rachet up thie campaigns for the early primaries. Remember, Dean has been actively campaigning since late summer of 2001, wheras Kerry, the first Democratic candidate to announce he was going to run did not do so until December 18, 2002. The other cnadidates announced even later.
If you are a progressive, you might want to look here:
http://www.progressiveparty.org/THis is the Vermont Progressive Party's website. I didnt know about them until I started looking more closely at Dean. But if I lived in Vemront, this would be my party. Might not be yor choice, but I cold live with the kind of government they suggest, very easily.
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