Treasury Looks Into Kerry Tax Analysis

[Eye and Monkey]

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-treasury-inquiry.html

By REUTERS
Published: April 6, 2004
Filed at 7:50 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Treasury's inspector general is conducting an inquiry into the propriety of having civil servants analyze tax proposals resembling those of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, a spokesman said on Tuesday. Rich Delmar, counsel for the inspector general's office, described it as a ``preliminary inquiry'' into how the analysis came about, and said he could not say precisely how long it would take.

Meanwhile, a Treasury spokesman defended the analysis and said Treasury was only doing its job in conducting it, while a Kerry campaign official charged that it was ``a disgrace'' on the Bush administration.

The issue blew up last month after Treasury published an analysis of Kerry's proposals on its Web site, without identifying them as those of the Democratic candidate. The analysis focused on the potential impact of a tax plan that rolls back tax reductions for taxpayers earning more than $200,000 annually -- the centerpiece of Kerry's proposal.

The analysis said their impact would be to boost taxes over the next decade by hundreds of billions of dollars.

[Judi Lynn]

1. How can Bush be allowed to use the Treasury this way

for his CAMPAIGN?????

(snip)
A U.S. law known as the Hatch Act forbids federal employees from taking part in partisan politics. Delmar said, however, that the inspector general's inquiry was in its preliminary stages and no assumptions had been made.

``We're not going in with any presumptions that it's a Hatch Act violation,'' he said.
(snip)

I've NEVER heard of any president even dreaming of a nasty move like this. Why wouldn't it be illegal?

It's dirty all the way through. No one could be stupid enough to imagine it's acceptable.

[0rganism]

2. "boost taxes over the next decade by hundreds of billions"? about time!!

How the hell else are we going to pay off the national debt on schedule? Seems like common sense to me.