(Alexandria, VA) -- Several radio and television ads sponsored by Jon Corzine's gubernatorial campaign disingenuously depict the aims and Congressional studies of the National Taxpayers Union (NTU), a spokesman for the non-profit citizen group charged today. The non-partisan NTU is not making any endorsements in the Garden State governor's contest.
"By portraying NTU as a far-right tool of the Bush Administration and characterizing our Rating of Congress as 'phony,' the Corzine campaign is being insincere with the people of New Jersey and unfairly attempting to tarnish the reputation of America's largest and oldest grassroots taxpayer organization," said NTU Director of Government Affairs Paul Gessing. "On behalf of our nearly 14,000 members in the Garden State, we are asking the Corzine campaign to correct their misleading ads."
Late last week and over the weekend, the Corzine-sponsored ads have painted NTU's long respected Rating as "phony" and "made up," while calling NTU an "extreme right-wing group" that is "in the back pocket of the Bush Administration." Gessing disputed and refuted these assertions:
- Since 1977 NTU's annual Rating of Congress has been based on every roll call vote affecting taxes, spending, debt, and regulation. It has received praise from many lawmakers, and is featured as a resource in non-partisan outlets such as the Almanac of American Politics. Former Democratic Senator William Proxmire noted, "[O]f all the Congressional roll calls published by outside interests, the NTU's is the most comprehensive and the most objective." This scorecard is the source of Senator Corzine's "F" grade to which both his and candidate Douglas Forrester's ads refer.
- Contrary to Corzine's "right wing" smear, NTU has been praised by liberal groups and editorial pages for its even-handed stance toward reducing wasteful spending, including corporate welfare, logging subsidies, and obsolete Cold War weapons systems. In the process, NTU has worked with lawmakers like Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and groups such as Oxfam and Ralph Nader's Public Citizen.
- NTU does not, as Corzine claims, seek to "destroy Social Security," but rather to preserve it through proposals such as income-testing for benefits, more rational COLA formulas, and the option for workers to invest part of their own payroll taxes in regulated individual retirement accounts. Nor does the group "oppose overtime pay."
- Far from being in the White House's "back pocket," NTU has opposed many of the Administration's major initiatives, including the Medicare prescription drug benefit and the No Child Left Behind Act. The group has been vocal in criticizing Bush for presiding over the biggest expansion of federal spending since Lyndon Johnson's Administration.
Gessing also noted that both the Corzine and Forrester campaigns may have confused the NTU Rating with a study focused solely on Congressional spending developed by NTU's research affiliate. Beginning in 1991 the NTU Foundation compiled the BillTally study that calculates an "agenda cost" for each lawmaker based on sponsorships of spending legislation. Democrat Russ Feingold was one of just three Senators in the last Congress who backed a net decrease in federal expenditures. This system is based on cost estimates primarily furnished by the sponsors of the bills and the Congressional Budget Office.
"All candidates in the Governor's race are obligated to provide truthful information to the citizens of New Jersey," Gessing concluded. "If the Corzine campaign will not comply with our request, then we are prepared to call upon all outlets sponsoring these wildly inaccurate ads to pull them."
NTU was founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes and limited government at all levels. Note: Further information on NTU's Rating and its issue stances may be found online at www.ntu.org.