Friday, October 10, 2008

Bredesen vs Obama: Watch for the differences

If you want to see how different of a Democrat Gov. Phil Bredesen is from Sen. Barack Obama, watch the next few months as state revenues continue to plummet due to poor sales tax collections.

Yesterday, the state announced that revenue for this fiscal year's budget was $128 million under projections. And that's just through August, not as the economy and stock market have tanked the past six weeks.

To account for the shortfall, Bredesen has cut health care for the most vulnerable and college programs for the young.

The governor says the fiscal problem for the state is from the lack of an income tax during a down economy. Yet Bredesen twice campaigned for governor saying that the state did not need an income tax. And he is maintaining the same now. Meanwhile, Obama is going to raise taxes on the people making the most income in this nation and lower taxes on those households making less than %250,000 annually.

Bredesen has been most critical of Obama for not being in touch with the common man and woman. He has recommended that his party's standard bearer go stand in Walmart as he has and talk to people. I shop at Walmart every week, and I've never seen Bredesen there. As far as a politician lacking a common touch, Bredesen makes Al Gore seem limber.

Two of the next four years of economic recession and slow recovery will be made more difficult on the common man and woman in Tennessee by a governor who cuts programs for the most vulnerable first. And the difference in his trickle-down or trickle-on Democratic politics versus Obama's grassroots crusade will be most telling and damning.

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