Cheney misleads

Yeah, like that's a surprise. But I did wonder about his remark in the debate about Kerry's tax plan hurting small business owners, knowing how many "conservative" guys who think of themselves as "small business owners" and bootstraps kind of guys are buying into everything Republican because they think Democrats favor lazy people. Daily Mislead has some clarification on Cheney's comment.

During Tuesday's debate Vice President Cheney claimed that John Kerry's plan to roll back tax cuts for individuals making over $200,000 would negatively impact nearly a million small businesses. Cheney said that, "about 900,000 small businesses will be hit if you do, in fact, do what they want to do with the top bracket." The figure Cheney cited is highly misleading.

Under Cheney's definition a small business is any taxpayer who reports some income - even just $1 - from a small business investment or partnership. By this logic, "every partner at a huge accounting firm or at the largest law firm would represent small businesses." Also, by Cheney's definition, President Bush would have counted as a small business in 2001 because that year "he reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise." The overwhelming majority of actual small businesses are in the lower tax brackets and would be unaffected by the Kerry proposal.