Pulp Fiction or More Grist for the Kerry Mill?

President Bush’s past as a baseball team owner and Texas oilman are well-known -- but does he really own a timber company?

That was the assertion of Democratic nominee John F. Kerry, who said during the rivals’ debate Friday night that Bush once made $84 from a “timber company that he owns.” Kerry did not offer any more details, and Bush was incredulous.

“I own a timber company?” Bush responded. “That’s news to me.”

As the crowd chuckled, he added, “Need some wood?”

Although Kerry was making a rhetorical point about Bush’s definition of what can be called a small business, it was not clear late Friday whether the Massachusetts senator was entirely accurate about Bush’s finances -- or whether the president was mistaken.

Kerry was trying to say that Bush inflates the number of small businesses that would get a tax increase under the Kerry plan.

Bush says Kerry’s plan would raise taxes on 900,000 small businesses, but Kerry argued that based on the president’s definition of a small business, even someone who reported just $84 in income would be included.

“Do you know why he gets that count?” Kerry asked. “The president got $84 from a timber company that he owns, and he’s counted as a small business. [Vice President] Dick Cheney’s counted as a small business. That’s how they do things. That’s just not right.”

Kerry campaign aides pointed to Factcheck.org, a website run by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, which cited the $84 item on Bush’s 2001 tax returns to make the same argument: that the Bush figures on the number of small businesses are inflated.

A review of Bush’s 2001 tax return shows that Bush reported $84 in income from Lone Star Trust in Midland, Texas. The blind trust -- through which Bush receives income but has no knowledge or control over its investments -- was set up after Bush was elected governor of Texas.

The money, according to the tax return, was from oil and gas production, not trees. But a separate filing, his 2003 personal financial disclosure form, says the trust owns a portion of a firm called LSTF -- organized, the form says, “for the production of trees for commercial sales.”

The form says no sales are expected until 2007.

Bush spokesman Scott Stanzel, noting that Kerry’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, has yet to produce her own tax returns, said the president’s finances were public information, and he called the Kerry assertion “a desperate measure.”

As for Cheney, the Annenberg website says he and his wife, Lynne, can be classified as small-business owners based on 2003 income from Lynne Cheney’s consulting business -- about $44,580, most of which came from her job as a director for Reader’s Digest.

“But giving the Cheneys a tax cut didn’t stimulate any hiring,” the website said. “She reported zero employees.”