April 13, 2004, Tuesday, BC cycle
SECTION: Washington Dateline
LENGTH: 774 words
HEADLINE: Bushes, Cheneys pay smaller share of 2003 income in federal taxes than year before
BYLINE: By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
...Cheney saved $11,000, mostly because the alternative minimum tax - designed to curb tax sheltering among high-income taxpayers - took back about three-quarters of the tax-cut benefit he would have reaped, McIntyre said.
Among the cuts that were in effect in 2003 but not in effect in 2002 were further decreases in tax rates at all bracket levels, an expansion of the lowest 10 percent bracket and lower taxation of capital gains and dividends.
"What can you say? They're rich, so you'd expect them to benefit from a tax cut for the rich," McIntyre said.
Bush sees the tax cuts passed on his watch much differently. He has traveled the country touting them as the reason the economy is rebounding and likes to espouse his philosophy that cuts should go to all.
"I insisted, on the tax relief, we cut the rates on everybody who pays taxes," Bush said in El Dorado, Ark., last week. "Some of them howled up in Washington when I did that. See, my attitude is, government ought not to play favorites."
Most of the income for Bush and his wife, Laura, came from his $397,264 is presidential income and $401,803 in interest from trusts that hold their assets, plus $23,417 in dividend income.
Cheney and his wife had more varied sources of earnings, including the vice president's $198,600 government salary; the $178,437 he earned in deferred compensation from Halliburton Co., the Dallas-based energy services firm he headed until Aug. 16, 2000; capital gains of $302,602, Mrs. Cheney's income from work at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based think tank; and compensation from her service on the Reader's Digest board of directors in 2003.
Mrs. Cheney also brought in $327,643 in royalties from her books, "America: A Patriotic Primer," "A is for Abigail" and soon-to-be-out "Fifty States." The Cheneys donated almost all of those proceeds to charity. The couple also earned $627,005 in interest that was exempt from taxes.
Halliburton has been awarded as much as $6 billion in contracts in postwar Iraq but has been under scrutiny for allegedly overcharging the government. Cheney elected in 1998 to recoup over five years a fixed portion of the money he made in 1999 as the company's chief executive officer.
Cheney's office has repeatedly stated that the vice president doesn't have a financial stake in the success of Halliburton nor has had any involvement in defense contracts...
-T
April 9, 2004, Friday, BC cycle
SECTION: Political News
LENGTH: 817 words
HEADLINE: WASHINGTON TODAY: Bush - normally "Mr. Brevity" - tending lately toward the loquacious
BYLINE: By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BODY:
Looks like that yawning boy in Florida may have been on to something when he struggled to stay awake during a recent President Bush speech.
Bush, his rhetoric best known for the occasional syntax mangle and terse, my-way-or-the-highway one-liners...
-T