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Thursday, April 23, 2009
Ohio House GOP leader warns of potential tax hike
Last week it was Republican state Auditor Mary Taylor playing a prophetess of doom on future state budgets. This week it’s Ohio House Minority Leader Bill Batchelder, the Medina Republican, playing a prophet.
Taylor last week projected that the state budget could face a shortfall as big as $8 billion by 2012, largely due to the federal stimulus dollars and other one-time money being used to prop up the budget proposed for 2010-2011.
Batchelder joined the chorus on Thursday, April 23, after receiving an analysis from the bipartisan Ohio Legislative Service Commission . The analysis, according to Batchelder, shows that a major tax increase- sales or income - would be needed for the 2012-2013 budget to compensate for the use of one-time funds in the 2010-2011 budget.
“This is just another example that the use of one-time monies to fund ongoing programs is dangerous to taxpayers as it creates a structural imbalance that will only put off and exacerbate our budget problems into the future,” Batchelder said in a press release.
Gov. Ted Strickland, not surprisingly, was having none of it. The governor doesn’t think the use of one-time money will force a tax hike, Amanda Wurst, Strickland’s spokeswoman, said in an e-mail.
“The governor believes that while tough choices may be required in future budgets, he has demonstrated these past two years that he is willing to make those difficult decisions to invest in job creation and maintain a fiscally responsible, balanced budget,” Wurst said.
The analysis was conducted by totaling the one-time money in the proposed budget and subtracting estimated natural tax growth. That left a shortfall of $4.29 billion.
The state sales tax would have to be raised from 5.5 percent to 7.2 percent or personal income tax rates would have to be hiked by 24 percent to raise that much, Batchelder said.
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TweetBrown asks Obama to create commission on U.S. trade policy
Sen. Sherrod Brown, apparently unimpressed with the Obama administration’s progress on trade policy, this week called for Obama to create a blue ribbon commission on trade policy. In a speech before the Washington International Trade Association, Brown also asked the Government Accountability to initiate a comprehensive review of our current trade agreements and their effects on the U.S. economy.
Brown, D-Ohio, has long been a critic of current trade policy, and pressed Obama repeatedly on the campaign trail to revisit the North American Free Trade Agreement. He arguest that current trade policy has contributed to the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States.
“Years of broken trade policy have resulted in stagnant wages, rising income inequality, and a shrinking middle class,” he said. “Broken trade policy contributed to the economic crisis, and it’s going to take a new direction in trade policy to rebuild our economy.”
Brown also continues to push a bill he first introduced in 2008 that would mandate trade pact reviews and help restore congressional oversight of future trade agreements.
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