Sunun Criticizes Shaheen over Taxes
By Riley Yates
WASHINGTON, Sept. 25, 2002–It could become a taxing question for New Hampshire voters tracking the Senate race: Is Gov. Jeanne Shaheen a pro-tax Democrat or a fiscal moderate?
Republican opponent Rep. John Sununu asserted the former in a telephone conference call Wednesday.
He highlighted several tax proposals Shaheen made while governor, including her failed proposal last year to institute a 2.5 percent sales tax, and her signature of a 1999 school budget plan that included New Hampshire’s first statewide property tax.
“This is not an agenda that is good for New Hampshire’s economy, and it’s not good for New Hampshire’s small businesses,” Sununu said.
“The contrast with Jeanne Shaheen is sharp and needs to be made,” Sununu added. “I have been a constant champion of the small business [need] to be protected. Jeanne Shaheen has not done so.”
But Colin Van Ostern, Shaheen’s communications director, said Shaheen is a fiscal moderate who has supported taxes only when they are necessary and often when they have bipartisan support
New Hampshire voters are familiar with her record, Van Ostern said in an interview Wednesday, and know “she’s been a moderate for years now.”
As an example of her bipartisan approach, Van Ostern said 75 percent of Republicans in the state house voted for the 1999 property tax before Shaheen signed it into law. CHECK FOR ACCURACY.
“For John Sununu to criticize that is to criticize three out of four Republicans in his party,” Van Ostern said.
As for a sales tax increase, Van Ostern said that President Bush once proposed a similar increase in 1997 while governor of Texas, arguing it was necessary to ease property tax burdens – the same argument Shaheen has made, Van Ostern said.
But Sununu said his record is one of consistently voting to cut taxes, emphasizing his lead in the House effort to pass Bush’s massive tax cut, which was signed into law in June 2001.
Sununu also noted his support for legislation making the repeal of the estate tax permanent, which passed the Republican-controlled House in June but has stalled in the Democratic Senate.
Shaheen supports Bush’s tax cut as well, Van Ostern said. “If she had been in the Senate at the time,” he said, “she would have voted for it.”
She also wants the estate tax repeal made permanent, he said, but only for small businesses and family farms, not the superwealthy.
Published in The Manchester Union Leader, in New Hampshire.
