Cruz rivals pounce on trust issues

Associated Press

BEAUFORT, S.C.

Ted Cruz is getting hammered by his Republican rivals over what they call a pattern of unethical campaign tactics and inaccurate statements by the Texas senator who has shaped his White House bid around trust.

Cruz has had some trouble getting all his facts straight in debates, has used campaign tactics that some find suspicious and had an ad by an outside group temporarily pulled for questions about its accuracy. His opponents are blunter, calling him simply a liar.

The Texas senator, whose 2015 autobiography is titled, “A Time for Truth,” shrugged off the criticism Tuesday while campaigning for Saturday’s South Carolina Republican primary.

“Both Donald Trump and Marco Rubio have this very strange pattern where if you point to their actual record, if you point to the words that have come out of their mouth, they don’t respond on substance. They just scream ‘Liar! Liar! Liar!’” Cruz said Tuesday.

Both Trump and Rubio have accused Cruz of distorting their records with increasing frequency. And while such charges are common in presidential politics, Cruz’s team also has faced rebukes for misleading voters in recent weeks from multiple outside groups – the Iowa Secretary of State and a prominent anti-abortion group, among them.

The fiery conservative’s ability to navigate questions about his integrity could well decide his fate in the crowded 2016 contest, where he remains a top-tier contender.

“He’s lying. And I think it’s disturbing,” Rubio said in Beaufort. “Just here in South Carolina this week, he’s lied about my record on Planned Parenthood, he’s lied about my position on marriage, he’s lied about his own record on immigration. So, I think this is very disturbing when you have a candidate that now on a regular basis just makes things up.”

Trump was even more aggressive, describing Cruz the day before as “the single biggest liar I’ve ever come across, in politics or otherwise.”

“And I have seen some of the best of them,” the billionaire businessman said in a statement. “His statements are totally untrue and completely outrageous. It is hard to believe a person who proclaims to be a Christian could be so dishonest and lie so much.”

Virtually all of the 2016 candidates have been caught stretching the truth over the course of the campaign, including Trump and Rubio. But only Cruz has embraced trust – and the play on his first name, “TRUSTED,” as the fundamental rationale of his campaign.

Meanwhile, a new analysis of Cruz’s tax plan concluded that it would add trillions to the federal deficit while providing huge tax cuts to the nation’s wealthiest earners.

The analysis issued Tuesday by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found Cruz’s plan would cost $8.6 trillion over in the first 10 years, not including interest on the national debt.

Center director Len Burman said about two-thirds of all federal discretionary spending would have to be cut to balance the budget if Cruz’s tax plan were enacted. Not even eliminating every dollar spent on national defense, the biggest pool of money in the federal budget, would be enough, he said.

Under Cruz’s plan, the top 0.1 percent of income earners would see their tax burden reduced 23 percent. Middle-income households would receive an average 2.4 percent tax cut, while the lowest earners would actually see their payments increase by about 1 percent, according to the analysis.

Cruz campaign spokesman Rick Tyler criticized the center’s analysis, which he said fails to account for the massive economic growth that would be spurred by Cruz’s plan. He pointed to a competing analysis by the conservative Tax Foundation, which concluded Cruz’s plan would grow the nation’s economy by nearly 14 percent over the next decade and add 5 million new jobs.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton said Tuesday she would give African-Americans their next ally in the White House and offered a detailed plan to overcome racial disparities ahead of crucial primaries in South Carolina and the Deep South.

Clinton took her presidential campaign to Harlem in New York City, her focus squarely on solidifying support among black voters who twice backed her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and will be vital in upcoming contests against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

The former secretary of state suggested black voters would find her proposals more far-reaching than Sanders’ warnings about economic inequality and the power of Wall Street. She said the recent water crisis in Flint, Mich., underscored the complex and intersecting challenges facing black communities.

“It’s not enough for your economic plan to be, ‘Break up the banks,’” Clinton said. “You also need a serious plan to create jobs especially in places where unemployment remains stubbornly high.”

Sanders has pushed back against Clinton’s contention that he is only a “single-issue” candidate and campaigned Tuesday in South Carolina, having a prayer breakfast with black ministers and appearing with Erica Garner, whose father, Eric Garner, died from a police chokehold in New York City in 2014.

Sanders pledged to reduce income inequality and break up big financial institutions, but also stressed criminal justice reform and voting rights and reflected on the country’s racial history. “It is clear to everybody that we still have a long, long way to go,” he said.