Minnick, Craig Spar Over Ads About Taxes

Democratic challenger Walt Minnick accused Republican U.S. Sen. Larry Craig of distorting his position on taxes in Craig’s recent television and radio commercials.

In particular, Minnick said on Tuesday that Craig was hypocritical in his claims that Minnick’s deficit reduction plan would raise federal taxes on Idaho families.

The former Boise forest products executive said his proposals actually would only close tax loopholes benefiting the tobacco, oil and ethanol industries, while Craig voted last year for a bill that would have raised taxes on almost 70,000 poor and lower-middle income families an average of $345 per year.

“The bottom line here is that Craig has voted to increase taxes on working families and I want to close tax loopholes for special interest recipients of corporate welfare that hurt America,” Minnick said, citing a Democratic leadership assessment of the Republican-led 104th Congress.

But Craig campaign spokesman Mike Tracy said other provisions in the legislation Minnick cited, which would have cut $43 billion over seven years from the Earned Income Tax Credit, would have resulted in net tax relief of more than $228 billion.

The package, eventually vetoed by President Clinton, included a $500-per-child income tax credit that would have offset the impact of Earned Income Tax Credit cuts on low- to middle-income families, “and then some,” Tracy said. And he said the Earned Income Tax Credit reduction amounted to “rolling back the Clinton welfare increases over the previous three years.”

Craig’s campaign ads portray Minnick as a tax-and-spend liberal, saying the Democrat’s one-year plan to balance the federal budget would require big tax increases because his “pork chop” proposals for spending cuts would not be enough to do the job.