The campaigns of Dave Reichert and Darcy Burner are locked in an argument over Burner's tax position. And my blog has ended up in the middle of it.

Burner has a TV commercial running that calls Reichert and Republicans liars for a variety of things, like the Iraq war. It includes this line:

Now newspaper reports prove that Reichert and his Republican friends aren't telling the truth about Darcy Burner's position on taxes.

At that point in the ad, watch carefully, and you'll see small type in the corner of the screen that says: "Source: The Seattle Times 10/7/06"

That refers to an "Excerpt from the blog" that ran in the paper and was an edited version of a post I did the day before. Here's what appeared in the paper as part of an 8th District ad watch:

As for the tax cuts, Republicans are relying on an interview Burner did in April on "Equal Time for the Progressive Side," a Democratic Radio program.

On the show Burner said:

"We have a set of tax policies that hurt working people and reward wealth instead and that is exactly backwards, particularly right now when the United States is running record deficits."

And she said, "We should let the tax cuts expire."

Collegio says Republicans take that as a reference to the 2001 package of tax cuts approved by Congress. He said that package included the taxes mentioned in the ad, so if Burner wants to let some expire, they all would.

Burner disputes that, and her campaign says she supports tax cuts for the middle class, research and development, and others.

That's it. I don't think that's strong enough to back up a claim in an ad that says "newspaper reports prove that Reichert and his Republican friends aren't telling the truth about Darcy Burner's position on taxes." And there was only a little left out from the original blog post.

I do think the Republican claim is worthy of more exploration and I'll get to that in a moment.

But the ad watch I wrote was an attempt to show the source of the claim that Burner wanted to raise taxes and gave her the chance to dispute it. And certainly readers had the opportunity to decide if they thought it was proof of the claim or not. In the Burner ad there's also the problem of unsubstantiated pluralism, a syndrome that also infects journalism. The Burner ad says "newspaper reports" but there's only one cited. (Have you ever noticed how often a newspaper story refers to "critics" or "sources" and then only mentions one? Stamp out rampant pluralism!)

This is the second version of the ad. The initial one referenced another Seattle Times story — one that had nothing to do with Burner's tax positions. The campaign changed it after we objected.

I was told by Times staff that the edited version removed all reference to The Seattle Times as the source for the claim that newspaper reports proved Reichert and Republicans were being untruthful. I didn't know until I finally watched it carefully last night that the citation had been changed to something I had written.

Interestingly, Burner initially used the same Times story that the Reichert campaign incorrectly quoted in an ad recently to try to show the Times had slapped Burner for inaccuracies. The Reichert campaign changed the ad, a little, and put it back on the air.

The story was Jonathan Martin's Sept. 24 piece that found inaccuracies in an ad from Burner and a mail piece from the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Burner's tax position is back in the forefront with a new ad from Reichert repeating some of the claims from the NRCC ad.

The Burner campaign put the ad on YouTube.


(A few interesting notes. The first half is Reichert, in color, speaking about his accomplishments. In the second half, a female narrator takes over as the commercial goes to black and white, slow motion video of Burner. And of course the music turns ominous, too.)

The tax issue is raised this way in the ad:

Darcy Burner's committed to raising taxes, the marriage penalty, death taxes and new Social Security taxes.

Reichert's campaign cites two sources for this. The first is a radio interview Burner did in April on a Democratic show called Equal Time Radio. The Reichert campaign says that is proof that Burner is committed to raising taxes. That's the same source the NRCC pointed to.

Here are the portions of the radio interview where Burner mentions taxes:

Burner: The level of economic strain on normal American families is way, way, way too high and that's because the Republicans have set up an environment where tax policies reward wealth instead of work, where the general wage is declining for most families, where health care costs are skyrocketing, where the ability to get access to education is going down because they are cutting funding for education, and you know, the people who are getting trapped in all of this are normal American families.

Interviewer: The middle class.

Burner: The middle class.

...

Burner: It is a huge problem right now. We have a set of tax policies that hurt working people and reward wealth instead and that is exactly backwards, particularly right now when the United States is running record deficits. In the last five year every man, woman, and child in this country has accumulated an additional $10,000 in national debt that they owe.

Interviewer: Additional.

Burner: Additional. That's $10,000 more for you, $10,000 more for me, $10,000 more for my three year old son; every single one of us and all of the sacrifices that are being made are being made on the backs of the middle class, we're the ones whose programs they're cutting. They're cutting funding for schools. They're cutting funding for student loads to make it hard for people to send their kids to college. They're cutting funding for veterans programs and for military benefits at a time when this country is at war. And it's our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters, who are going to fight that war, while thy take tax cuts.

Interviewer: What can we do about our national debt? Do we have to cut all social programs in order to make that go away? How can we fix it?

Burner: We have to be very smart about making the investments in the future of this country that we need to make investments in things like education because in the long term and even in the short term those things are essential for us to remain competitive and we have to make sure that everybody pays their fair share.

We should let the tax cuts expire.

That last line is what Reichert and the NRCC point to as Burner's commitment to raising taxes. A NRCC spokesman told me that since the tax exemptions are bundled together in a single bill, Burner cannot pick and choose the exemptions she wants to see expire.

That strikes me as an overly technical "gotcha." If that bill were before her then that'd be the question. But that's certainly not as valuable to voters as knowing where she stands on the individual pieces of the tax cut package.

And Burner has since been more specific, saying she supports making tax cuts permanent if they are "aimed at middle class families and seniors, including the protection of the child tax credit and the elimination of the marriage penalty."

For the charge that Burner wants to raise Social Security taxes, Reichert's campaign cites her appearance on the John Carlson radio show in August where she said:

"One of the obvious things to do is there is a cap right now beyond in which people don't pay any social security taxes and that's an obvious way to deal with the issues."

I heard her say something similar last week on Robert Mak's show. The Burner campaign does not dispute this. Campaign manager Zach Silk said it shows Burner is "honestly dealing with Social Security" and criticized Reichert for his vague answers to questions about Social Security.

Burner clearly opposes some of the tax breaks that she thinks reward wealth not work. And she's willing to support higher Social Security taxes. But she says she supports middle class tax breaks, and would not support the marriage penalty.

I don't expect this will do anything to clear up the dispute. But you at least have the full context of Burner's comments on taxes that are being used by Republicans.