Monday, October 29, 2007

More on Huck's Fiscal Record   [Rich Lowry]

John Fund responds to this post from Friday:

In response to your Arkansas correspondent. Gov. Huckabee likes to pretent that road taxes were raised by statewide referendum and he had nothing to do with that. But the referendum involved HIS road program and he campaigned for it and the higher taxes it represented. That is an established fact

Secondly, while a Supreme Court decision did come down that forced higher education spending, Mr. Huckabee cannot escape full responsibility for that either. He was presented by both aides and GOP legislators with an extensive plan while the education litigation was moving through lower courts that would have put a Constitutional amendment on the statewide ballot that would have limited the court's jurisdiction. Polls showed it would pass. Huckabee ignored the recommendation, with the consequences that most observers predicted : higher taxes to pump more money into a failing system.

The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, the state's largest newspaper, published a summary of Huckabee's fiscal record this month, nothing that he "boasts of 90 tax cuts during his tenure, which ended in January." But the paper's own analysis showed a "net tax increase of $505 million, a figure adjusted for inflation and economic growth, according to the [Arkansas] Department of Finance and Administration."

10/29 09:43 AMShare