Cornyn poised in re-election fight to stick by Bush on taxes, Iraq
Republican seeking second U.S. Senate term next year is banking that voters will back him on stands he's taken.
Listen to this article or download audio file.Click-2-Listen
By W. Gardner Selby
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
For someone who proclaims his independence from the White House, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas can still sound like a cheerleader for President Bush.
Speaking to fellow Republicans in Fort Worth at a presidential straw poll recently, Cornyn staked a claim to re-election next year as a pro-war, anti-tax candidate who expects to match up with voter sentiments in his home state.
Ralph Barrera
AMERICAN-STATESMAN
(enlarge photo)
John Cornyn says he has differed with Bush some.
MORE W. GARDNER SELBY
W. GARDNER SELBY
He stressed his support for the course Bush has set in Iraq and suggested that voters can rely only on Republicans to extend the tax cuts Bush made in his first term.
Two Democratic Senate hopefuls, San Antonio lawyer Mikal Watts and state Rep. Rick Noriega of Houston, are counting on voters to hold Cornyn accountable for Republican stewardship of Congress in the first four years of his six-year term.
"People will not rehire someone who has had bad plans replaced by more bad plans," Noriega said.
Watts called Cornyn a senator "who parrots exactly what he's told to say by this administration and Karl Rove," the former White House counselor.
Cornyn, who ran in 2002 as part of "Team Bush," said in an August interview that he has been a Bush ally on judicial appointments and the war on terrorism but that he has also parted with his friend on a few 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.
He later called Bush tone-deaf on the issue. "I don't think he had any real concept of the public engagement on that issue," he said.
In Fort Worth, though, Cornyn said Bush was absolutely right to raise the specter of Vietnam when discussing Democrats' calls for a timed withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
If American forces leave prematurely, Cornyn said, the region will plunge into a humanitarian crisis, and unwatched terrorists will plot attacks. "Unless we get the job done, they will follow us here," he said. "And we've got to make sure that never ever happens again. Not another 9/11, not ever."
His Democratic opponents each noted that as young men, Cornyn and Bush didn't serve in Vietnam.
Noriega, a lieutenant colonel in the Texas National Guard, said, "Comparing Vietnam to the Middle East is like comparing apples to wheat; they are not in the same food group. Differences include geography, terrain, cultures, religion, technology, history of region, just to name a few. This is just another example of the unfortunate circumstance we face when we have leaders who have not walked the walk."
Watts said, "I don't think there is a plan for victory in Iraq. ... We have to stay in the region, but I don't think we should be standing around on street corners getting shot at while we observe someone else's civil war."
On the domestic front, Cornyn charged Democrats with planning not to extend tax cuts enacted at Bush's request starting in 2001. Barring congressional action, cuts of income, capital gains, dividends and other taxes will expire in 2011.
On Capitol Hill, the cuts are rated either Bush's keystone domestic achievement or a gift to the nation's wealthiest residents.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that extending the tax cuts would cost the government more than $1.8 trillion through 2017.
Tax-cut advocates say such money rightly belongs to taxpayers.
Cornyn's take: Democrats will let into law the biggest tax increase in history.
"They're going to do it without a single vote unless we get the majority back," he said. "They're going to do it because the tax relief that we passed under President Bush back in 2003 will expire unless we make it permanent. And we have to get the majority back and keep taxes low and keep America growing."
Watts said he would review each tax cut one by one but opposes extending cuts for the wealthy as long as government runs a deficit.
Noriega called it "blatantly false" to forecast all the cuts vanishing.
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.
Republicans and a plurality of independents supported making the cuts permanent. A majority of Democrats wished to see them expire.
About half of respondents agreed that the cuts should be extended only for households with annual incomes of less than $150,000. About a third of voters favored making the cuts permanent for everyone.
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.
An eventual need to repay the cuts, he said, would drive down disposable income as taxpayers see cuts in government programs or bumps in taxes to bankroll the cuts, leaving at least three in four households with lower after-tax incomes.
"There is no free lunch because, ultimately, the government faces a budget constraint," Furman said.
wgselby@statesman.com, 445-3644
