HOME / chatterbox: Gossip, speculation, and scuttlebutt about politics.

Dubya Admits Whopper!

Timothy NoahPosted Tuesday, March 27, 2001, at 3:53 PM ET

Speaking yesterday in Kansas City, President Bush made the following remark about his proposed tax cut:

RSS

We also drop the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent. And this is where some of the folks in Washington would rather holler than listen to the facts. It's easier to say some things about maybe certain folks shouldn't be getting tax relief. But I want people to understand this about dropping the top rate. A major beneficiary of dropping the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent are small business owners. Thousands of small businesses pay taxes at the top personal rate.

To the untrained eye, this looks like a surly swipe at Washington-based critics of Bush's tax proposal. But close readers of this column will quickly grasp that it is really a heavily camouflaged admission of error. This past Friday, Chatterbox dinged Bush, Rep. Jennifer Dunn, and/or the Treasury Department for claiming that 17.4 million small businesses stood to benefit if Congress were to enact Bush's proposed reduction of the top tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent. In fact, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the maximum number of small businesses who stood to benefit was 691,000, which is less than 5 percent of the figure cited by Bush. And according to Bob McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice, even that overstates the Bush tax proposal's impact on small business. In truth, McIntyre says, only 160,000 small businesses are paying the 39.6 percent rate, or less than 1 percent of the figure cited by Bush. (There may be 17.4 million small businesses in the United States, but McIntyre points out that only 13.3 million of these pay income taxes at all because only 13.3 million report profits. The Treasury report cited by Bush, which misleadingly stated that "many" of the 17.4 million small businesses paid the 39.6 percent rate--fewer than 1 percent is hardly "many"--also managed to ignore the fact that 4.1 million small businesses report losses. For more details, click here.)

When you know all this, the subliminal message in yesterday's Kansas City speech becomes clear. When Bush says that small businesses will be "a major beneficiary" of his tax cut, his vague language acknowledges that his administration can no longer claim that "many" small businesses will benefit. And when he says that "thousands of small businesses" pay the 39.6 percent rate, he's conceding that he can no longer say that 17.4 million small businesses will be helped by his tax cut.

E-mail Timothy Noah at .

E-MAIL

RECOMMEND... Get Slate RSS Feeds

Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

COMMENTS

Reader Comments From The Fray:

[Notes from the Fray Editor: We are, of course, bothered in the Fray about small businesses and taxes, and political infighting, but there is a bigger issue here: how could Chatterbox use the word subliminal in an item about President Bush and miss the obvious joke? As Adam O says here, "Hey! The correct word is 'subliminable'; I think the leader of the free world know his grammar better than the columnist, no?"]

Mr. Noah: GWB went to the "thousands of small businesses" formula as early as March 19^th. Then, as you pointed out, he reverted to the whopper on the 22^nd and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he reverts again in weeks to come. It's a strange and untypical performance. The Bushies put out lots of misleading numbers, but they're usually tied to reality in some roundabout fashion. Not this time . . .

--Penalcolony

(To reply, click here.)

(3/27)

Bush's trouble with the truth is not a matter of overstating his case. It is much worse than that. Bush's trouble with the truth comes from his (or more accurately, his handler's) sense that the true objectives of his proposals must be masked in order to slip them past the public. Small business is obviously not the object of Bush's tax proposal. Why tour the country to win a tax break that less than 1% of your claimed target can actually enjoy? Yet that is how Bush, or whoever pulls the string that moves Bush's mouth, has chosen to sell this proposal. What it amounts to is governing by pretext, and it is deeply destructive to democracy.

We had a glimpse of the value Bush places on democracy when he allowed himself to be appointed president by the usual array of plutocratic interests. This is now confirmed by Bush's cynical efforts to dishonestly sell his programs under false colors rather than allow them to be judged by the people on their merits. Americans, it must seem to Bush, cannot be trusted to place the interests of the elite above their own and must therefore must be conned with specious arguments that conceal the true objectives

--Balzac

(To reply, or to read this post in full, click here.)

Bush made some mistakes by stating that millions of small business owners would benefit by reducing the top marginal rate. Apparently, it was based upon the Treasury Dept's ridiculous press release, which stated that since 17.4 million small business owners filed tax returns, many of them would benefit from having the highest marginal rate reduced, while all of them would benefit from having all marginal rates reduced. Unfortunately, the press release was poorly written, and so confusing that the White House misinterpreted it. At least, I think that is the explanation. That being said, this administration is using anything it can, no matter how outlandish, to try to sell its tax plan. Finally, the Bush administration is going to have to stand on its own merits, and comparisons to the Clinton administration will become increasingly irrelevant

--Cato the Censor

(To reply, click here.)

(3/28)

What did you think of this article?

Join The Fray: Our Reader Discussion Forum

POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES