LAT: Contrasting Campaign Rhetoric With Facts

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-context6sep06.story
THE RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE
Contrasting Campaign Rhetoric With Facts
By Nick Anderson
Times Staff Writer

September 6, 2004

WASHINGTON — President Bush and Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts are criticizing each other with increasing intensity. Here is some context for charges made during the Republican and Democratic conventions and on the campaign trail.

President Bush

Statement: "Sen. Kerry opposed Medicare reform and health savings accounts. After supporting my education reforms, he now wants to dilute them…. He opposed reducing the marriage penalty, opposed doubling the child credit, opposed lowering income taxes for all who pay them." — Thursday at the Republican convention

Context: Kerry missed the final vote in 2003 on a bill establishing the first Medicare prescription-drug benefit. But he opposed it in preliminary votes and has criticized the law since then as a giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry that fails to allow the government to negotiate lower drug prices. He also criticizes a provision of the law that allows consumers to save money for health expenses tax-free, calling it inadequate relief for 45 million uninsured Americans.

Kerry voted for the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, but he criticized its implementation and said it needed more funding. Kerry also has voted against many Republican tax initiatives, but he has supported numerous Democratic tax-cut initiatives over the years. He now pledges to cut taxes for the middle class and raise taxes only on families that make more than $200,000 a year.

Statement: "I proposed, and the Congress overwhelmingly passed, $87 billion in funding needed by our troops doing battle in Afghanistan and Iraq. My opponent and his running mate voted against this money for bullets and fuel and vehicles and body armor." — Thursday speech

Context: Kerry and Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, his running mate, voted against the Bush-backed spending bill in October 2003. At the time, many Democratic primary voters were attracted to Howard Dean's surging, antiwar presidential candidacy. This vote helped Kerry and Edwards appeal to the former Vermont governor's base even though both senators had voted the year before to authorize the use of force against Iraq. But Kerry said he opposed the spending bill to protest what he called Bush's missteps in Iraq. He supported a Democratic proposal to provide the funding while raising taxes on the wealthy to offset the expense — an idea that failed to pass.<snip>

[yellerpup]

1. When I HAD a job

I was given the option in my "benefits" package to save part of my income (pre-tax) in a health care expense account administered by the company. The problem was that if you put more money in per year than you actually used, you lost that money at the end of the year. You were advised to make very accurate estimates as to how much you put into this account because you could not get it back. I didn't sign up. Unless you knew you had cancer or something, I can't imagine why anyone would.