Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

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Dean says Bush responsible for tight state budget

Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Political Writer Friday, June 20, 2003

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Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, said in San Francisco on Thursday that the blame for California's budget crisis should be placed at the doorstep of the White House -- and dismissed the current Republican-led effort to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis as "a mistake."

"Unless there's been malfeasance . . . to recall someone because they have low popularity ratings opens the door to similar efforts in the future -- no matter which party is in control," he told reporters after a speech to the Bar Association of San Francisco.

Dean received a warm reception and a standing ovation from the crowd of 500 at the Marriott Hotel during a packed day of campaigning and fund raising in the Bay Area, which included meetings with supporters and a rush-hour commute on the San Francisco-Larkspur Ferry. Other Democratic candidates crisscrossing California this month include U.S. Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Bob Graham of Florida, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri.

Dean hammered Bush on both economic and national security issues in his San Francisco speech, saying that "if you can't get two things right as president of the United States, then you have not served your country well."

On the Bush tax cut -- and California's $38 billion-plus budget deficit -- Dean addressed his own tenure as the chief executive of Vermont, and the troubles of Democrat Davis, currently besieged by a recall effort. And he appeared to draw a sharp contrast between the two states.

"When I was governor of Vermont, we balanced 12 budgets," he said. "You know how we did it? We didn't give big tax cuts when we had all that money coming in. We put aside a whole lot of money in a rainy day fund. We paid off a quarter of our debt . . . and we never let the Legislature increase the budget more than 5 percent in any particular year."

"I know what's going on in California right now," he said. "In our state, we're not cutting higher education. We're not cutting K-12 education. We're not cutting Medicaid for kids -- and we have a balanced budget.

"That's what you get when you pay attention to the money when you have it, instead of giving it away when you don't."

Asked by reporters later if he was criticizing Sacramento -- and Davis -- Dean insisted he wasn't, and said that he placed the blame squarely at the doorstep of the White House for its handling of the economy.

"I was talking about the president having enormous tax cuts, and piling up the biggest deficits in the history of the United States of America, and expanding our national debt from 26 percent of the GNP (gross national product) to 42 percent," he said. Dean said, as a former governor, he has deep concern for "the fiscal situation most states find themselves in." Dean also spoke forcefully on the issue of Iraq and the administration's continued insistence that it will find weapons of mass destruction there in the wake of the war effort.

Asked by reporters whether the American people were lied to on the matter, Dean said, "Yes, they were."

"They were told by the secretary of defense that we knew where the weapons (in Iraq) were, and evidently, there were no such weapons," he said. "We didn't know where they were."

"We were told by the vice president that there was a high likelihood that Saddam had nuclear weapons," he said. "That turned out not to be true.

"We were told by the president that we could expect that the Iraqi troops would use chemical weapons on us, that the order had been given, that an attack by Saddam Hussein could happen at any moment. That turned out not to be true."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/06/20/MN265787.DTL