Fri, Oct 15, 2004 page1

• Candidates get their facts wrong, again

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  As they traded charges and countercharges on the economy, healthcare and other domestic issues, US President George W. Bush mischaracterized who received the tax cuts that have been the centerpiece of his legislative record, and Senator John Kerry exaggerated when he said he was proposing clear ways to raise revenue to pay for his spending proposals.

  Kerry was also wrong in saying the president's refusal to allow the government to negotiate drug prices had contributed to the increase in Medicare premiums next year.

  TAXES

  Bush said most of the tax reduction in his presidency had gone "to low and middle-income Americans." In fact, Internal Revenue Service figures compiled by the Tax Policy Center of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute show that half of all the tax cuts in effect this year go to the wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers, those with incomes above about US$70,000. One-quarter of the cuts go to the richest 1 percent, those with incomes above about US$290,000.

  Bush also said the cuts were needed "to get us out of the recession." But he proposed the cuts in his last presidential campaign, in 2000, before anyone knew that a recession was at hand, and he justified them by saying the surplus should be returned to the taxpayers.

  The president said, as he often has elsewhere, that Kerry had voted for tax increases 98 times. That is probably true. But many, if not most, of those were multiple votes on the same bills or on nonbinding resolutions and motions.

  Kerry has voted for two large tax increases -- the 1990 budget law backed by the president's father that put the country on the road to a balanced budget, and former President Bill Clinton's 1993 bill, which imposed most of the increases on upper-income taxpayers.

  BUDGET

  Kerry said Bush had proposed US$3 trillion in new spending, and Bush said Kerry had proposed US$2 trillion. Neither of those claims can be proved, because the details of their proposals are so vague.

  Kerry was correct when he said the budget picture had declined from a projected US$5.6 trillion surplus over 10 years when Bush took office to large deficits for the foreseeable future.

  But Kerry was not accurate when he said he had shown "exactly how" he intended to pay for all his spending proposals. In fact, he lists as revenue raisers vague promises like closing corporate loopholes and making the government more efficient.

  Kerry was right that Bush had opposed pay-as-you-go rules that required tax cuts and spending increases to be offset by other tax increases or spending cuts. Those rules were put in effect in the administration of Bush's father and remained throughout the Clinton years. With Bush's encouragement, they were allowed to expire.

  BORDER SECURITY

  Kerry said 95 percent of the cargo containers entering American ports were not inspected. Bush said, "We're doing everything we can to protect our borders and ports."

  According to the Congressional Research Service, 7 million cargo containers a year enter American ports. The fear is that a nuclear explosive that would be hard to smuggle through Customs could be hidden on a ship and detonated in a port. The 5 percent inspection rate is correct, according to congressional testimony. It takes five agents three hours to inspect a typical containership for contraband when it arrives.

  Since 2002, under new Container Security Initiative, US and foreign customs officials have started to inspect some suspicious cargoes at overseas ports, based on screening criteria that focus on certain ports, shipping companies and the like. Some ports are equipped with radiation detectors.

  Legislation has been introduced in Congress to require inspection overseas of all cargoes bound for the US. The Associated Press said a report to be released yesterday would show that the inspector general of the Homeland Security Department acknowledges that some progress has been made but says better detection equipment and searches continue to be needed.

  SOCIAL SECURITY

  Both candidates hedged on Social Security.

  Bush never answered how he would pay the cost, estimated at more than US$1 trillion, of going from an entirely federal retirement system to one in which workers could put part of their Social Security taxes into private retirement accounts.

  Kerry never answered what he would do to make sure that the Social Security system would have the resources to pay benefits to all the retirees in the baby boom generation.

  JOBS

  Bush has been, as Kerry said, the first president since Herbert Hoover to have the number of jobs in the country decline in his term. As of the end of last month, there were at least 585,000 fewer jobs than existed when Bush took office. But jobs are much more a function of the business cycle than they are of government policies, and Kerry has not offered a surefire way to guarantee employment growth.

  PELL GRANTS

  In a sense, both candidates told pieces of the truth about Pell Grants, which are essentially college scholarships for low-income students.

  It is true, as Kerry implied, that average size of Pell Grants has decreased, shrinking slightly, to US$2,399 next year from US$2,457 last year, with few students receiving the maximum US$4,050.

  Bush's assertion, "We've increased Pell Grants by 1 million students," says little about administration policy, leadership or budgeting, because students obtain grants based on eligibility and tuition costs. It is true, however, that the government has in the last two years increased spending on Pell Grants, to US$12.8 billion from US$11.3 billion last year.

  As more middle and low-income students qualify for aid, and with tuition vastly outpacing inflation, the shortfall between financial aid and the cost of tuition has widened.

  RACE RELATIONS

  Kerry criticized Bush for poor relations with "the civil rights leadership," saying he was "the first president ever, I think, not to meet with the NAACP" and had never met the Congressional Black Caucus. Bush is the first president since Hoover to have never spoken at the annual NAACP meeting, but he has met members of the caucus at least twice and has also appeared before the Urban League.

  OSAMA BIN LADEN

  Bush incorrectly denied saying last year that he was no longer concerned about finding Osama bin Laden.

  Kerry, criticizing the president for shifting his attention from that search to the Iraq war, said: "Six months after he said Osama bin Laden must be caught dead or alive, this president was asked, `Where's Osama bin Laden?' He said: `I don't know. I don't really think about him very much. I'm not that concerned.'"

  Bush denied making the remark. "Gosh, I don't think I ever said I'm not worried about Osama bin Laden," he said in the debate. "That's kind of one of those exaggerations."

  But at a news conference on March 13 last year, Bush said just that when asked why he rarely mentioned bin Laden any more.

  "I don't know where he is," Bush replied. "I just don't spend that much time on him really, to be honest with you."

  He added at the time: "I'll repeat what I said. I truly am not that concerned about him."
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