09.12.07
There’s No Denying Cornyn Is Bush’s Senator
Sen. John Cornyn (R - Texas) is a Bush lackey. There is nodoubt. I say this in relation to W’s piece yesterday about the Senator, Cornyn poised in re-election fight to stick by Bush on taxes, Iraq. While Cornyn’s flip-flopped on the border fence, he has oppposed Bush on a few, mostly minor, issues:
A Cornyn proposal to allow greater access to federal records has cleared the Senate without White House backing. Cornyn also is among senators at odds with the president by proposing to give states alternative ways of complying with the federal education accountability system that Bush started.
Also, he and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., are seeking to grant the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over tobacco and ingredients including nicotine, a step yet to be endorsed by Bush.
This summer, Cornyn opposed the Bush-favored compromise on changes to immigration policy. The senator unsuccessfully offered an amendment barring felons and other offenders from legal residency.
But on the issues that matter most to regular Americans Cornyn will walk in lock-step with Bush - the war, health care, taxes, trade, and jobs.
W goes on to quote a poll later in the story.
Nationally, 52 percent of voters favored making the tax cuts permanent in a poll conducted this year by Moore Information, an Oregon-based research firm. Thirty-eight percent preferred to let the cuts expire, and 10 percent had no opinion
Here’s a link to Moore Information. They have quite a GOP bent. EOW’s not saying the poll is rigged, just making readers aware of who did the poll. W does attempt to balance it with some quotes from an economist at the Brookings Institute.
Jason Furman, an economist and senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, an independent research outfit, testified before the House Ways and Means Committee last week that extending the cuts would widen after-tax income gaps between Americans.
Furman said a best-case U.S. Treasury projection suggests an extremely slight impact on the economy, with extended cuts more likely increasing the national debt and reducing government savings.
As with any poll it’s all in how the question is asked. Maybe Moore Information should ask this in a poll, “Would you be for raising taxes on the wealthiest 1% of Americans, rescinding the Bush tax cuts, so all Americans could have health care?” I’ll be the numbers would be much different. More no the Bush tax cuts from the CBPP, Extending The President’s Tax Cuts And Amt Relief Would Cost $3.5 Trillion Through 2017 and the CTJ, Bush Tax Cuts Shows Growing Tilt to the Very Rich, (Tip to Vince).
Cronyn can try, and he will, but there’s no denying he’s Bush’s Senator.