Barnhart blasts Republican attacks on Obama tax policy

While Oregon delegates were meeting in caucuses and getting ready to cast their vote for Barack Obama on Thursday, U.S. Rep. Phil Barnhart (D-Central Lane) was hard at work touting Obama’s policies in Oregon and defending the Democratic presidential candidate from Republican attacks.

“We Democrats like to think that voters vote on issues,” Barnhart said. “Republicans are better at reaching out to peoples’ emotions, and they’re not confined by the truth.”

Barnhart said that Republicans tended to misrepresent Obama’s tax policy by saying it would include a tax hike for middle income families. Earlier in the day, Republican Party of Oregon chairman Vance Day had said that Obama was going to raise taxes on the middle class.

“Barack Obama wants to change the tax code with proposed tax increases for people making $42,000 a year,” Day said.

But Barnhart, who is chair of the House Revenue Committee, said that Obama proposed a tax cut for working families of $1000, and for individuals of $500, with the net result producing another $600 million being put back into Oregon economic activity.

“And more importantly, he restores taxes on high income corporations, just as they existed at the end of the Clinton administration. That’s critically important because it allows for funds to be available for basic programs,” Barnhart said.

Barnhart said that the misrepresentation was not necessarily limited to the presidential campaign either. He also cited the controversy in Oregon’s Senate race on the State Capitol remodel, saying that U.S. Sen. Gordon Smith’s (R-Pendleton) attacks against U.S. Sen. candidate Oregon House Speaker Jeff Merkley (D-Portland) constitute another example of what he believed to be Republicans misrepresenting the situation.

“Mr. Smith never tells you that decisions about furniture were a small part of a big thing that had to get done,” Barnhart said. “Those decisions were made by a bipartisan commission, and for Mr. Smith to blame Jeff Merkley is another example of Republicans playing loose with the truth.”

Asked what effect, if any, the Republican attacks would have on the general election, Barnhart said there was too much momentum on the side of the Democrats in the presidential race.

“The most important thing about Barack Obama is that he has managed to excite a lot of people that had never been in politics before, or had become very cynical,” Barnhart said. “I knew a 75-year-old lawyer, and I got a call from him the day before the primary saying, ‘I’m now a Democrat; I need to vote for Obama.’ That’s the kind of excitement that will carry us through November.”