Ohio Republican Says - Just the Facts Please!

Cleverland, OH (PRWEB) August 14, 2004

Ohioan Ed Tovey has been a staunch Republican since the 1980 presidential election of Ronald Reagan. In the aftermath of the 2000 election Tovey started tracking “just the facts” – an issues list that he would use to rate George W. Bush as the CEO he claimed to be. The results: on every issue Tovey tracked he found the Bush administration had failed. This year Tovey is supporting John Kerry.

Bush set a goal of creating 5.5 million new jobs, 4.1 million created through the economy’s normal job growth projections, and 1.4 million due to tax cuts. According to Labor Department’s numbers released August 6, the administration has instead lost nearly 1.6 million jobs. The new jobs Bush claims to be adding pay 36% LESS per year than the ones we are losing.

The tax cuts did very little to create jobs. Nearly all economists agree that reducing taxes on dividends and capital gains has very little effect on job growth. Moreover, business owners didn’t need a tax cut – they needed people from the lower and middle income brackets to have more spending money so their businesses could SELL more products. But with tax cuts directed to the high-income households, who spend a lower share of their income than do working class families. High-income households invested the money, but with the historic low interest rates, businesspeople found it cheaper to borrow the cash they need and spurned the equities market for expansion. As a result the income tax cuts by design were ineffective.

About the war in Iraq, Tovey asks one question: Was the war executed as well as we should have expected? Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz told a Senate hearing: "There's a lot of money to pay for this that doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money, and it starts with the assets of the Iraqi people." Yet, as of several days ago, cost projections for this war were nearly $250 billion dollars. Even now, with oil at historic high prices, we are still pouring money into this war. Nearly 1,000 of our brave young men and women have died. Another 12,000 have been wounded.

”The RNC advertisements that Kerry caused us to send troops in without body armor are ridiculous,” Tovey told RepublicansForKerry04.org recently. “Senators don’t send our kids to war – the President does.”

On down the list -- homeland security, ethics and responsibility, health care -- in every case Tovey found that by the administration’s own standards, George W. Bush as the CEO has failed. “Anyway you cut it the answer remains the same,” Tovey says. “Sorry George we have to let you go!”

[For Ed Tovey’s complete “Just the Facts” document, contact media@republicansforkerry04.org]

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