Inside Politics

Dean’s tax turnabout

“After months of touting his plan to repeal all of President Bush’s tax cuts, former Vermont governor Howard Dean is moving toward embracing a tax-relief package for middle-income Americans, which would amount to a major revamping of a centerpiece of his Democratic presidential campaign,” the Boston Globe reports.

“Dean’s action comes after his team of economic advisers privately gave him a ‘unanimous’ recommendation to back a middle-income tax cut to offset the increases that would come with repealing Bush’s plan, a top campaign official said.

“The economic team has been especially concerned that Dean’s proposed repeal of the Bush cuts has enabled critics to accuse him of supporting what amounts to a $2,000 tax increase on families earning between $73,000 and $145,000,” Globe reporter Michael Kranish writes.

“[Tuesday], Dean signaled that he is heeding his team’s advice to provide some form of middle-class tax relief, saying during an Iowa debate, ‘Ultimately, we will have a program of tax fairness for middle-class people.’

“A top Dean official said [Tuesday] that the campaign has made a ‘strategic’ decision for Dean to refrain during the primaries from revealing details of a proposal to trim middle-class taxes, preferring to announce it during the general election.”

Mass. backlash

Sixty-nine percent of likely voters in Massachusetts would like to vote on a constitutional amendment to block homosexual “marriage,” according to a Zogby International poll done for the Coalition for Marriage.

Massachusetts lawmakers are scheduled to consider a constitutional amendment on marriage Feb. 11, said Ron Crews, spokesman for the coalition, which is composed of some 17 traditional values, legal, religious and medical groups.

According to the Zogby poll, taken in December of 601 likely voters, 52 percent said only traditional marriages should be legal and 73 percent said if homosexual couples want to provide for each other, they should do so through private arrangements already allowed by law.

Forty-eight percent said a candidate’s position on homosexual “marriage” “made no difference” to them, but 33 percent said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supported homosexual “marriage.”

Nearly two-thirds of the voters also said they would support a constitutional amendment to require that Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court judges be re-elected. Such an amendment, sponsored by state Sen. Michael Knapik, is also set to be taken up Feb. 11, the group said.

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