Labour lines on tax cuts

Too Right blogged that he was polled recently and asked the following:

Would you prefer either:
1. a small tax cut of $10-$15 per week with no cuts to public services and no borrowing or 2. a larger tax cut which meant cuts to public services and borrowing to fund them.

Now Too Right concludes that the client is Labour, and I am sure he is right. And the question shows that Labour plans to scare monger. The difference between National and Labour will be the rate of growth of future spending, which is vastly different to cutting existing funding for existing services. Likewise neither National nor Labour need to borrow for tax cuts, as we have huge surpluses. They will both borrow for various capital expenditure and investment programmes though.

But here is the irony – Dr Cullen himself is planning to increase borrowing and debt, and also to slow the rate of growth of future spending.

Incidentially Too Right labelled the poll, a “push poll”. It isn’t. A push poll is not simply a poll which asks a loaded question – that is the testing of future attack lines. It becomes a push poll only if you are conducting the poll not to gather data, but to get that message out to as many people as possible.