Shaheen rips GOP fiscal policies

Democratic Senate candidate Jeanne Shaheen on Saturday blasted the Bush administration’s fiscal policies, saying that GOP presidential candidate John McCain and her opponent John Sununu offer only more failure.

Shaheen, who has a 10-point polling lead over Sen. Sununu (R-N.H.), gave the Democratic response to President Bush’s national radio address. She took the opportunity to take a slap at “the same old Bush-McCain-Sununu agenda.”

{mosads}“They have protected billions in tax giveaways for Big Oil and tax loopholes for businesses who ship jobs overseas,” Shaheen said. “Rather than making a serious commitment to the development of clean alternative energy that can transform our economy and create thousands of new jobs. But just over a week from now, Republicans will assemble at their convention, and ask you for four more years of the same.”

A former governor, Shaheen has a consistent and relatively comfortable lead over Sununu in most polls. The race is a rematch of the 2002 campaign. However, since then the Granite State appears to have shifted toward the Democrats. After voting for President Bush in 2000, the state supported Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) for president in 2004. In 2006, Democrats defeated both of the state’s two Republican representatives and retained the governor’s office.

Shaheen used Saturday’s address to remind New Hampshire voters of her tax cut proposal of 50 percent on healthcare premiums paid by small businesses on their employees, as well as energy tax benefits for small businesses.

Sununu spokeswoman Stefani Zimmerman responded by calling Sununu “an independent leader and effective voice for the people of New Hampshire,” while calling Shaheen a failure as governor.

Sununu “wrote and guided the effort to pass legislation that was signed into law that bans internet access taxes, helped lead an effort to allow small businesses to write-off new purchases of equipment, and has stood up against out of control spending,” Zimmerman said in a statement.

President Bush, in his address, repeated his call for Congress to allow more oil drilling, criticizing legislators for having failed to act.

“The fundamental reason for high gasoline prices is that the supply of oil is not keeping pace with demand,” Bush said. “To reduce pressure on prices, we need to increase the supply of oil, especially oil produced here at home.”

The president also preemptively rejected efforts to attach a drilling proposal to a larger bill that would contain provisions objectionable to Republicans — for example, higher taxes on oil companies.

“Democratic leaders know that these counterproductive proposals will not become law,” Bush said. “Yet they seem ready to push this legislation as a way to block offshore drilling while appearing to be in favor of it.”