Tax reform, trade dominate Senate debate

e-mail this story

Tenenbaum and DeMint have been doggedly sparring for weeks over both issues, with tax reform being the focal point since mid-August.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee began airing a new television ad Monday attacking DeMint's tax reform plan that is built around a national sales tax that would replace the income tax and eliminate the IRS.

"Can you afford a 23 percent sales tax?" an unseen announcer says over a scene of a young woman and man.

"Twenty-three percent on everything you buy. On groceries. On medicine. Even to buy a house," the announcer says.

Terry Sullivan, DeMint's campaign manager, doesn't dispute the percentage, but said the proposed change "is a tax cut" that is under "desperate" attack by Democrats.

Sullivan said that by eliminating all taxes, prices for goods and services would drop, making the sales tax bite even less for the consumer while "making us more competitive in the global economy.

"It's a question of which end you tax it on. Everything you buy is taxed, by more than 23 percent in most cases," Sullivan said. Lower income consumers would not be burdened, he said, because the proposal includes monthly rebates for those earning up to two times the poverty level.

DeMint, a third-term congressman from Greenville, has said Georgia Rep. John Linder's bill, that he co-signed, isn't the best vehicle for the road to reform, but it launched discussion of the issue. He has also signed a bill proposing a flat tax.

In Columbia, Tenenbaum used the occasion of Greenville's last textile machinery exposition to hammer DeMint on trade.

Where Tenenbaum has espoused protectionist policies, the more internationally minded DeMint is a free-trader.

The exposition fell victim to the region's shrinking textile industry and the globalization of production.

Tenenbaum called the final trade show "just the latest reminder of how Washington has let the textile industry and South Carolina down. Unless Jim DeMint and Washington finally take a stand, the industry will be not just damaged but completely eliminated."

While industry officials are expected to petition the administration next week to extend the quotas, U.S. Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. of York has introduced legislation to impose limits on yearly import growth once the quotas are gone.

Tenenbaum said she strongly supports Spratt's bill and wants DeMint to back it as well.

But Sullivan said the comments are an "untrue attack by a desperate candidate."

DeMint has done a great deal for the industry and a large portion of it is supporting him, Sullivan said.

Kara Borie, DeMint's campaign spokeswoman, said, "While Inez says that every member of the North and South Carolina congressional delegations 'except Jim DeMint' is fighting to protect the textile industry from illegal Chinese imports, she forgets that it was DeMint who helped pass and secure the very textile safeguards she is now calling for."

Citing a Monday Washington Post article reporting that the Bush administration will seek continued textile import limits when quotas expire at the end of the year, Borie said DeMint addressed the issue with Commerce Officials two weeks ago.

She said DeMint "helped create safeguards ... when he voted for Trade Promotion Authority" and has helped get several safeguards initiated.

—

Staff writer Dan Hoover covers politics and can be reached at 298-4883.