Bush the Great Misleader?
Written 4/17/04
Some critics of President Bush have said he mislead
the American people in his case for going to war in Iraq. The three
main ways I've seen the critics say this was done was by: 1) Hyping
intelligence that made the case look stronger. 2) Using intelligence
from unreliable sources. 3) Ignoring the intelligence that made
the case look weaker, and keeping it from the public. While I'm
not sure if President Bush actually did all of this in his case
for war, I do know his re-election campaign is doing exactly that,
when it comes to attacking Senator Kerry on gas taxes.
If you haven't seen the attack ad, it says Senator
Kerry supported a 50 cent gas tax increase, and if his gas tax increases
were made law, the average family would pay $657 more a year. It
further says Senator Kerry supported higher gas taxes 11 times.
Sounds pretty damning to Senator Kerry, doesn't it? It won't, when
we get to the facts of the matter.
Lets start with the 50 cent gas tax increase. The
only evidence that Senator Kerry supported a 50 cent gas tax increase
is from two old newspaper clips from 1994 in which he complains
that he deserves more credit as a deficit-cutter. That's it. He
never sponsored or voted for such a tax. In fact, in 1993 when Sen.
Charles Robb introduced legislation to increase the gas tax 10 cents
a year for 5 years, Senator Kerry did not add his name to it, or
vote for it. So considering he didn't help get a bill passed that
called for a 50 cent gas tax increase and hasn't sponsored one since
those newspaper clips, the ad is just hyping Senator Kerry's support
for a 50 cent gas tax increae while not mentioning he was against
one.
As for the 50 gas tax increase costing the average
family $657 more per year, well that's wrong. The information the
Bush campaign used to get that number was from a website that used
a wrong assumption on the total number of households in the U.S.
That number being 100 million, and when it comes to the amount of
gasoline consumed per day, the website used 360 million gallons.
Divide that by the assumed number of households and you get 3.6
gallons consumed per household per day. The Bush campaign then says
3.6 gallons times a 50 cent gas tax equals $1.80 per day. Multiply
that by 365 days in a year, and you get it's number of $657. Unfortunately
for the Bush campaign that website wasn't completely accurate. If
they had consulted the Census Bureau, they would have discovered
that the total number of U.S. households was just under 109.3 million,
not 100 million. As for the amount of gasoline consumed per day,
if they had consulted the Federal Highway Administration, they would
have learned it wasn't 360 million gallons, but instead 358.1 million
gallons. Use these numbers and you get 3.28 gallons consumed per
household per day. Multiply by the 50 cents and you get $1.64 per
day which comes out to $598 a year. So instead of using two Federal
Agencies which would be the most reliable, the Bush campaign used
a website as it's source that made it's calculations end up being
$59 more a year.
Next in the ad comes the claim that Senator Kerry
supported higher gas taxes 11 times, which would make one think
he voted to increase gas taxes 11 different times, wouldn't it?
While that might be what the Bush campaign would like you to think,
that is untrue. Nine of the eleven votes the Bush campaign cite
on their website came from the same increase. Five of those nine
votes came from the maneuvering that led to a single 4.3 cent per
gallon a gas increase that was part of President Clinton's economic
package in 1993. The other four of the nine votes the Bush campaign
cite were just votes against attempts at repealing the 4.3 cent
increase in 1996, 1998, and 2000. Not votes for actually increasing
gas taxes. The Bush campaign also cites a vote in 2000 against a
proposal to suspend the federal gasoline tax entirely for six months,
which wasn't a vote against lower taxes since it would have remained
unchanged after the 6 month period was up. To make it 11 the Bush
campaign doesn't cite a vote, but the newspaper clips from 1994
when Senator Kerry mentioned he once supported a 50 cent gas tax
increase. So nine of the 11 times the Bush campaign cite are from
the same increase, five in maneuvering for that increase, four in
keeping that increase from being repealed. One was from voting against
suspending, not lowering, the federal gas tax, and the other wasn't
even a vote. Sounds like the Bush campaign is again guilty of hyping,
this time to make it sound like Senator Kerry supported increasing
gas taxes 11 times.
Something the ad seems to forget to mention is that
President Bush's chief economist Gregory Mankiw and his Vice President
Dick Cheney have been in favor of higher gas taxes. When Dick Cheney
was a congressmen in 1986 he introduced legislation to create a
$24 per barrel price floor on imported crude oil. It would have
set a mandatory minimum price, indexed to inflation, that today
would be at $36.12 per barrel. If it had been passed, consumers
would have paid over $1.2 trillion in increased gas prices since
then, with $600 billion going to oil companies. Senator Kerry and
15 Senators co-sponsored a resolution in 1987 that was in opposition
to Cheney's plan, and fortunately it wasn't put into law. As for
Gregory Mankiw, he praised, yes praised, a 50 cent gas tax increase
in 1999 in an article he wrote that was published
by Fortune magazine. Now when it comes to an ad about increasing
gas taxes, wouldn't these facts be important? Especially the one
about Senator Kerry being against a bill that would have increase
gas prices?
After having discussed all of these facts, it appears
to me that this ad that has President Bush's vocal approval, does
mislead the American people in the same ways his critics say he
did with his case for war with Iraq. It hypes up Senator Kerry's
support for higher gas taxes, making it sound like he supported
11 different increases. It hypes Senator Kerry's support for a 50
cent gas tax, while not mentioning he actually was against one.
It uses an unreliable source to get it's numbers to calculate how
much that 50 cent gas tax would cost, causing the cost to be higher,
and doesn't mention how President Bush's Vice President was in favor
of a major gas price increase which Senator Kerry was against, or
how President Bush's chief economist praised the idea of a 50 cent
gas tax. Does this actually mean President Bush did mislead the
American people in going to war? Of course not. Though I do know
that once you catch someone with their hand in the cookie jar, it's
safe to assume it has been in there before.