The battle has been shaping up between Maria and Mike.  In this exchange the issue is my favorite where she is concerned, the Trifecta tax Bill.

Mike in his ad says:

"Maria Cantwell voted with her party, against our deduction and against our families," 

…and notes that the deduction was worth $550 to Washington families.  It continues amd says:

"Sen. Cantwell said she voted ‘no’ because she disagreed with parts of the bill, yet when she was offered a compromise, she refused to talk,".

Both of these statements are true on their face, but like most political speech they do make a few liberties with semantics.  Maria and Sen Frist, it should be noted did meet, but where he claims he offered to ease her concerns, she claims he was not making an offer in good faith.

Cantwell responded in a press release that:

"Mike McGavick is running an ad on the air right now that he knows is ‘not an accurate reflection’ of her views," said Cantwell campaign chief strategist Michael Meehan. "McGavick knows full well that Senator Cantwell supports the Cantwell sales tax deduction bill."

The truth is that the portion of the bill they are discussing, the sales tax deduction, is something Maria actually co-authored, so yes she obviously supports it.  But at the same time, the fact is also clear tat she did vote against a one year extension of it.  Sure she can claim to want it made permanent but one year is better then an expiration.

The benefit of this tax deduction is also under debate, since it is really only for people who itemize their deductions, so a lot of low income people never see any benefit.

But I have to say that while I fully sympathize with the plight of the poor, I don’t see any reason to ignore the middle class who may actually need some tax relief too.  Let’s not get so caught up in demagoguing this and making it all about the poor, that we forget everyone else.  So if the exemption was important enough for Maria to author it, then it is important enough to keep in play.

The most cutting accusation from McGavick is that she voted along party lines.  Well duh.  Big shock.

But since one of my pet peeves with her is that she is misleading her constituents about why she voted against the minimum wage part of the bill, then I am thinking that Mike is missing the real tragedy of the bill and vote.  They should be looking into the mimimum wage provisions.

In fact they both are so focused on the estimated impact to Washington residents, that they are effectively ignoring the impact in 49 other states.

Her response is out as well.  She starts off in a diner so we all can remember her humble roots.  Her choice is fairly obvious, as the minimum wage bill she claims would heavily affect waitresses.  It states:

"When Republican leaders tried to cut Washington state’s minimum wage, I said ‘no.’ My parents struggled, and I worked as a waitress, so I know people count on us getting these things right,"

See this is where she loses me, because that is not what happened at all, and the facts of this have been fairly well debunked.  She continues her determined campaign to convince us that she was protecting us against the evil Republicans.

I would also note that she and Darcy Burner seem determined to convince us they are just poor folk.  But I digress.

The fact is that while both ads take a few leaps in logic, Maria’s just repeats the same old lie story, whereas Mike’s stretches the truth a bit to call her on one aspect of it.

Trackback URI | Comments RSS