Advocacy Group Targets Howard Dean's Tax Record
By: Administrative Account | Source: CNSNews.com
December 5, 2003 11:05AM EST

By Susan Jones
CNSNews.com Morning Editor
December 05, 2003

(CNSNews.com) - A free-market advocacy group is running a new television ad focusing on Howard Dean's "abysmal" record on taxes.

Dean, one of the Democratic presidential hopefuls, represents "a real threat to America's economic future," according to Club for Growth President Stephen Moore.

"The country has had a forceful economic rebound due in large part to President Bush's tax cuts. Handing over the economy to Howard Dean would give him a license to pick our pockets," Moore said in a press release.

Dean has called President Bush's tax-cut policy a mistake: "We ought to get rid of the entire Bush tax cut. It is bad for the economy and it has not created one job," Dean said at a recent gathering of the Democratic candidates.

"We are going to repeal the Bush tax cuts," Dean said at a debate in New Mexico on Sept. 4. "You can't pay for health insurance if you have those tax cuts. Most middle-class people never got a tax cut from George Bush," Dean added, "and I'm sure they'd rather have health insurance for everybody than the $100 they got from George Bush's tax cut. For less than a third of George Bush's tax cuts, we can cover every man, woman and child in America, and that's exactly what we should do, and we should not wait."

'Rejected'

The new Club for Growth ad opens with a timeline of defeated Democratic nominees George McGovern, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis (all stamped with the word "rejected"), then moves to Howard Dean. The ad says Dean would raise income taxes, marriage taxes, capital gains taxes and dividend taxes, if he is elected president.

"For three decades, Democratic presidential candidates have supported huge tax increases," the announcer says. "This year, they're back. Howard Dean says he'll raise taxes on the average family by more than $1,900 a year.

The ad ends with the question "Will Howard Dean ever learn?"

The television ad began airing Dec. 4 on TV stations in Des Moines, Iowa, and Manchester, N.H., and is also running on cable channels in both states.

The Club for Growth was founded in 1999 to elect pro-economic-growth fiscal conservatives.

The organization said it forwards campaign contributions from its members to free-market-oriented candidates in targeted congressional races.

In the 2000 election cycle, the Club for Growth says it spent $ 2.4 million to help elect 10 new Republicans to Congress.

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