Dick Morris Needs to Do More Research
Reading Dick Morris’ column on Mike Huckabee this morning, it looks like Morris went to Huckabee’s website and copied and pasted Huckabee’s talking points, fibs, warts, and all.
Most galling is his reiteration of Huckabee’s persistent fib that the Arkansas Supreme Court “ordered” the former governor to raise the sales tax to pay for education improvements. False. Untrue. Incorrect. Bogus. Fill in the adjective of your choice. The State Supreme Court mandated education improvements, but the state could pay for those improvements by raising taxes or cutting spending elsewhere. Huckabee and his Legislature decided to raise taxes. Morris also tries to belittle the effect of this tax increase by writing, “He raised the sales tax one cent in 11 years and did that only after the courts ordered him to do so.” But the 2003 sales tax increase constituted a 17% hike and was the largest tax hike in Arkansas’ state history (Associated Press, 02/06/04).
Morris perpetuates the myth that Huckabee doesn’t deserve responsibility for his 1996 sales tax hike because he “got voter approval for a one-eighth-of-one-cent hike for parks and recreation.” The truth is, Huckabee campaigned vigorously for the sales tax hike, even taking a fishing trip down the Arkansas River to promote it, and in the end, his support proved crucial. According to the Arkansas Secretary of State website, The amendment passed by just 8,284 votes out of 802,148 votes cast, or a meager 1% margin.
Morris also gives Huckabee credit for repealing an income tax surcharge he enacted in 2003, but the surcharge was enacted as a temporary measure in order to garner the necessary votes for passage in the House and Senate. There is nothing impressive about repealing a temporary tax that never should have been enacted in the first place.
Morris excuses the fact that the average Arkansas tax burden rose 47% under Hucakbee’s tenure by saying that other states raised taxes more. Even if we take Morris’ word on this, that is not a particularly comforting thought. There are many liberal governors out there, and I wouldn’t want them to be the Republican nominee for President either. It’s like saying Billy hit Sally twice, so it’s okay that Jimmy hit her only once.
I also have to wonder if Dick Morris is actually listening to the kind of things Huckabee talks about on the campaign trail. Morris praises Hucakbee for urging “an all-out attack on teen smoking and overeating and a push for exercise not as the policies of a big-government liberal but as the requisites of a fiscal conservative anxious to save tax money.” Excuse me? Huckabee signed a smoking ban as governor and said he will impose a national smoking ban if elected president. If that’s not the policy of a “big-government liberal,” then I don’t know what is. Of course, there are Hucakbee’s other big-government policies: increasing the minimum wage, a federally-mandated arts and music curriculum, and farm subsidies.
Finally, here is a list of some of Huckabee’s other tax hikes the governor either supported or raised that Morris omits from his column:
--1999: Gas and diesel fuel tax hikes
--2000: A sales tax hike
--2001: A cigarette tax hike
--2001: A nursing home bed tax
--2002: His ardent opposition against an amendment to repeal the sales tax on groceries and medicine
--2002: Huckabee’s proposal to raise the sales tax (immediately after he was reelected—funny how he never mentioned this proposal when he was campaigning)
--2003: A tobacco tax hike
--2003: His opposition to a congressional moratorium on taxing Internet access
--2006: His insistence on maintaining the beer tax even though it was subject to expire
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