Huckabee and Taxes
Washington – In his recent response to the Club for Growth’s presidential white paper on his gubernatorial record, Governor Huckabee touts his $80 million tax cut in 1997, but fails to explain the multiple tax hikes he signed or allowed to become law during the rest of his tenure, including a $377 million sales tax hike in 2004 (Los Angeles Times 02/07/04). By the end of his second full term, sales taxes in Arkansas were 37% higher than when Governor Huckabee took office in 1996. Motor fuel taxes and cigarette taxes were 16% and 103% higher respectively (American for Tax Reform 01/07/07). “This really isn’t very complicated,” said the Club’s President, Pat Toomey. “Taxes were higher when he left office than when he entered. On balance, that makes him a tax hiker.”
The governor also wildly exaggerates his record, claiming he cut taxes “nearly 100 times,” but the Arkansas Times demonstrates the absurdity of this claim: “By claiming to have cut taxes 94 times, Huckabee fixed a standard for what is a tax cut: every little exemption, credit, deduction or tax break of any kind. By that standard every governor [over] the past 60 years cut taxes numerous times. No session of the Legislature passes without a dozen or more such cuts” (01/30/07).
Finally, Governor Huckabee claims he supports returning Arkansas’ surplus to the people in the form of a tax cut, but he had ample opportunity in the summer of 2006 to do just that as governor and declined to take the necessary steps of calling the Legislature into session (Arkansas News Bureau 07/06/06). It is disingenuous for Governor Huckabee to take credit for supporting a tax cut only he had the power to initiate when he refused to do so.
