SUBMITTED NEWS RELEASE FROM NEVADA STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
LAS VEGAS–In recent weeks, Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian each released economic plans ripped from the GOP playbook, cribbed from eight years of failed Bush-Cheney economic policies that got us where we are today and tailor made to sink Nevada’s economy.
Both Lowden and Tarkanian want tax giveaways to the very rich–including Wall Street banks that received bailout funds, oil companies that are making record profits and corporations that continue our to ship jobs overseas–while placing a crushing tax burden on working families. They want to eliminate the capital gains and estate taxes, which affect only top wage earners and a few Nevada estates each year. And Danny Tarkanian wants to go even farther–bringing back Reagan-era tax rates that would cut taxes for people in the highest income brackets, like Sue Lowden, while actually increasing taxes for lower and middle-income families, like the people who work in Lowden’s casinos.
While, like national Republicans, Lowden and Tarkianian talk a good game on deficit reduction, the truth is neither one has thought of a way to pay for these tax cuts, which will increase our federal deficit to benefit the wealthy.
And in case burdening Nevada families with higher taxes to pay for corporate giveaways wasn’t enough, Lowden and Tarkanian also want to build a job-killing nuclear waste facility at Yucca Mountain, a plan we know is both dangerous and foolish, and one that Nevadans have rejected for decades.
Both Lowden and Tarkanian would also swear off earmarked funding for Nevada, which would hamstring our state’s ability to compete on a level playing field for federal funding.
Meanwhile, Sen. Harry Reid has passed more than $1 trillion in tax relief for Nevada’s middle-class families, including a sales tax deduction and $500 million in economic recovery funding that went back into the pockets of 1 million hardworking Nevadans. He killed the Yucca Mountain waste dump once and for all with the help of Pres. Barack Obama and is looking into alternative military or research uses of the site that would create jobs without shipping dangerous nuclear waste across the country and over Nevada’s streets and railways. And Reid has historically brought home more earmarks than the rest of Nevada’s delegation combined, securing crucial funding for everything from social services to our armed forces to renewable energy projects to road and bridge work.
The few Lowden-Tarkanian proposals that actually do make sense have already been enacted by Reid, such as extending the first-time home buyer tax credit to all buyers and allowing private companies to purchase federal land for economic development in Nevada.
“Although it’s hard to tell the difference between the economic plans Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian have released recently, it’s easy to tell their proposals are bad for Nevada,” said Phoebe Sweet, communications director for the Nevada State Democratic Party. “Sen. Reid has a proven track record of delivering for Nevada’s economy–whether by securing recovery funding for tax relief and renewable energy projects, by fully funding Medicaid to help the state’s needy and unemployed or ending plans for a job-killing nuclear waste dump. The best Lowden and Tarkanian can come up with, meanwhile, are indistinguishable plans to revert to the disastrous Bush-Cheney economic policies that led us to this economic downturn.”
