Childers and Nunnelee Battle On Taxes

Travis Childers is sticking by his ad that claims his opponent, Alan Nunnelee, supports the Fair Tax using anonymous comments on websites as his source. In his latest presser, Childers doubles-down on those comments and calls Nunnelee a liar.

Here is what a Childers staffer said: “Once again, Alan Nunnelee is playing politics with issues of importance to North Mississippi by trying to hide his support for raising taxes. In response to questions about his support for the Fair Tax, Nunnelee now tries to avoid a direct answer or create distractions instead of telling North Mississippians the truth – that he supports a 23% tax increase on Mississippi families, breaking his pledge to never raise taxes. The only thing worse than Alan Nunnelee’s plan to raise the cost of a bag of groceries by 23% is his unwillingness to stand behind his dangerous plans.”

Since the Childers camp has now problem making things up, it isn’t that shocking that they would leave out a key ingredient from that “23 percent tax increase,” such as it replaces the current tax structure and eliminates the IRS/ income tax.

Nunnelee’s latest presser says this (in part): “We’ve heard a lot about taxes from Congressman Childers in the last few weeks. His controversial ads have led to The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal’s call for Congressman Childers to take his attack ad off the air because it was false, and The Columbus Dispatch to strongly criticize his ad as ‘unfair,’ ‘lame’ and ‘misleading.’ Congressman Childers has spent weeks making stuff up. Around the District, North Mississippians have had enough. They want the truth.”

The rest from Nunnelee is below the fold.

I want to say this about Childers whether you are supporting him or not: Does the tone of his campaign sound like an incumbent who believes he is going to win? In an attempt to show this is a close race, he releases internal polling showing him at 46 percent. He couldn’t even get 50 percent- the key number for an incumbent- in his own polls. He has tried attacking Nunnelee on a series of issues that seem to be a moot point, and now he is using blog comments to make his points. At the moment in time, Nunnelee is attacking like the incumbent- or at least the one in charge- and Childers is acting like the challenging lobbing attacking hoping something will stick.

From Nunnelee:
- Congressman Childers voted 14 times to increase taxes while in Congress. His votes will increase taxes by $654 billion over the next five years.

- Those tax increases came on things like real estate, small businesses, and family investment partnerships. He also voted to extend the Death Tax.

- Congressman Childers says he’ll vote to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for one year when econ omists say a one year extension does nothing to encourage businesses to begin hiring. We need the tax cuts extended permanently.

- North Mississippi is at 13% unemployment. Congressman Childers said last week he’d like to “keep things as they are” according to the Associated Press.

- Since Congressman Childers took office, Mississippi’s First District has lost 22,000 jobs.

- Alan Nunnelee has voted to cut taxes 150 times in his career.

- Congressman Childers is willing to say anything to keep his job. His ads are based on anonymous online blog comments.

- Congressman Childers can’t defend his record of voting for tax increases, $2.5 trillion in new federal spending, and new regulations that hurt our small businesses. He’s turned to desperation.