Opponents trade barbs on tax cuts

Republican Rep. George Nethercutt accused incumbent Sen. Patty Murray of “taxing people to death” by not supporting the tax cuts that he does.

Murray’s campaign shot back that she has supported plenty of tax cuts, just not all the ones that Nethercutt and the White House have been sponsoring for the nation’s upper-income residents.

Nethercutt, a Spokane congressman trying to take over Murray’s U.S. Senate seat, held a series of news conferences around the state Monday to introduce his latest tax proposals and label Democrat Murray as “fighting for higher taxes.” He supports lowering taxes on everything from businesses to personal income to married couples to inheritance – what Republicans call the “death tax.”

“Patty Murray is literally taxing us to death,” he said at a news conference outside the Opera House in Spokane. “If she is re-elected, she will raise your taxes. I will not.”

One of the best examples of what he would do on taxes, Nethercutt said, was his work this spring on a House bill to allow Washington taxpayers to deduct the sales tax they pay if they itemize their deductions for their federal income tax. The House passed the bill, and it’s pending in the Senate.

He challenged Murray to work to get it through the Senate.

But Murray long has supported making sales tax deductible, said her campaign spokeswoman Alex Glass. She would like to see it as a permanent deduction, but if the only thing the Senate can pass is the two-year deduction in Nethercutt’s plan, Murray will vote for that, Glass said.

Some of the other things Nethercutt said he supports – reforms to the alternative minimum tax, a health insurance tax credit and keeping the Internet tax-free – Murray also supports, Glass said.

The biggest difference between the two candidates concerns tax cuts proposed by President Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Nethercutt said they have worked to stimulate the economy and should be made permanent.

“Every tax dollar collected is another dollar that won’t be invested in creating jobs, to create more taxpayers,” he said. “When you let peo-ple keep more of their hard-earned money, they’ll invest it and spend it, and that leads to economic growth and job creation.”

Glass said Murray favors Democratic alternatives, supporting tax cuts targeted for middle-class and working-class families but opposing them for the top income bracket. She also is concerned that the federal deficit is growing.

Nethercutt said the added jobs and economic stimulation provided by tax cuts will take care of the deficit if the federal government can control spending. The unemployment rate is below the average for the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, he said.

Those averages probably don’t mean much to the 200,000 workers in Washington state who have lost their jobs in the last three years or to the 30,000 who have used up their unemployment benefits, Glass responded.