Republican congressional candidate Rick O’Donnell went on the offensive Monday, calling his opponent a pro-tax Democrat whose policies would cost 7th District voters thousands of dollars in extra federal taxes.
Flanked by families he said benefited from the tax-relief packages pushed by President Bush in 2001 and 2003, O’Donnell said his opponent, Ed Perlmutter, wants to roll back the tax cuts, but he will fight to keep them intact.
“If Ed is elected to Congress and has his way with our tax policy, during his two-year term the average 7th District voter will pay an extra $5,000 in taxes,” said Rick O’Donnell. “That’s just wrong, plain and simple.”
Perlmutter’s campaign accused O’Donnell of distorting his position. Perlmutter has said he wants to keep intact the middle-class tax cuts but would roll back tax cuts he believes favor the “wealthiest 1 percent of America.”
“Ed wants to fight for middle-class tax relief and take the country in another direction,” said Perlmutter’s spokesman, Scott Chase. “He doesn’t think giving the rich huge tax cuts benefits the middle class.”
The O’Donnell campaign said it planned to continue pressing the issue in a TV commercial being released today.
O’Donnell came out fighting Monday morning after last week’s revelation that he took a trip with his girlfriend to Panama weeks before resigning as the head of the Colorado Commission on Higher Education to campaign for Congress. The trip was arranged by a television station that sold the commission advertising.
He repeated his call for Perlmutter to release his income tax records for the eight years he was in the state senate and lambasted him for voting to raise the annual salary of part-time legislators from $17,500 to $30,000 in 1997. Perlmutter has released tax records for 2003 and 2004.
“The public has a right to know if you are voting yourself a 71 percent salary increase when you are in the Legislature, what else were you making on the side and who was paying your salary,” O’Donnell said of Perlmutter, who maintained a bankruptcy law practice while a state senator.
O’Donnell’s campaign also criticized Perlmutter for saying in 1997 that he would like to do away with the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights growth limits. And O’Donnell released a list of eight votes that Perlmutter made in the Legislature that he contends show Perlmutter would be more likely to increase federal taxes.
Seven of those votes gave local government the right to increase fees or taxes for local issues. The other one would have given state and local jurisdictions the right to charge a tax on purchases from out-of-state retailers, but it never was signed into law.
Citing a study by the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit that favors lower taxes, O’Donnell said Coloradans had the second highest amount of tax relief in the nation from the Bush tax cuts. The Perlmutter campaign countered with a 2004 study by the Congressional Budget Office that said the tax cuts shifted the tax burden from the richest Americans to the middle class.
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-954-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com.
