Exposing Bushie's BIG LIE #2 that Kerry Votes "Weak On Defense":
In its latest radio ad, the Bush-Cheney campaign claims that, after the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, Kerry voted to cut $7.5 billion from the nation's intelligence budget. In fact, in 1994 -- as the end of the Cold War led many to believe that the United States could safely reduce its military spending -- Kerry proposed a deficit-reduction measure that would have cut, among other things, approximately $1 billion a year from the $30 billion intelligence budget for each of the next six years. When that proposal failed to pass, Kerry proposed the next year that the intelligence budget be reduced by $300 million a year for the next five years. That proposal didn't pass, either. But as the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center has noted in a Fact Check analysis criticizing the Bush-Cheney claim on Kerry's intelligence votes, a Republican proposal to cut $1 billion from the intelligence budget passed on a voice vote the same year.
The Bush-Cheney claims about Kerry's defense record are of a piece. In a charge circulated so widely on the Internet that the folks at Snopes.com have felt the need to debunk it as an "urban legend," Republicans say that Kerry has voted against the B-1 and B-2 bombers, the F-14, F-15 and F-16 fighters, the Apache helicopter, the Bradley fighting vehicle, the Abrams tank and a host of other critical weapons. In fact, Kerry did not vote against these weapons specifically. Rather, as the Annenberg fact check explains, Kerry simply voted against the overall defense appropriations bills in 1990 and 1995. Having voted in support of such bills at least 16 other years, Kerry is, on balance, a supporter of the weapons systems the Republicans accuse him of opposing. Moreover, Annenberg says, the first President Bush and his defense secretary, Dick Cheney, also advocated eliminating some of the same weapons Kerry opposed.
The Kerry campaign has begun to push back against some of these distortions. As soon as the Bush campaign released its new radio ad last week, Kerry's staffers responded with an e-mail to reporters in which they tried to set the record straight. And late last week, the Kerry campaign finally started to fight fire with fire over Kerry's vote on the $87 billion supplemental appropriation for the war in Iraq. For months, the Republicans have attacked Kerry for voting to authorize the use of force in Iraq and then voting against an additional $87 billion for funding the war. They've mocked him for saying that he "voted for the $87 billion before I voted against it." In reality, there's little to mock there. Although Kerry explained himself badly, he voted for the Iraq funding when it was going to be paid for by rolling back the Bush tax cut for the very richest Americans. He voted against it when that funding proposal died and the entire amount was to be added onto the already exploding federal budget deficit.
* Kerry also has the same defense budget voting record as rightwing conservative neo-Bushie Zell Miller, one of theb attack dogs Bushies use to spread these lies.
Kerry and his people have been trying to make that point for months; last week, they finally made a more aggressive one: Twice during the negotiations over the $87 billion, they said, Bush's staff threatened he would veto the legislation if it wasn't drafted his way.
If Kerry's votes were a flip-flop, weren't Bush's threats, too? The "steady leader" would surely say no. But in posing the question, the Kerry camp sent a warning shot across the White House bow: Playing politics with voting records is a dangerous game, and it's one that both sides can play. The question now is, when -- if ever -- will the Kerry campaign begin playing that game for keeps? |
