State Auditor Mary Taylor told Ohioans on Thursday about something Democrats don't want anyone to think about: the potential $8 billion hole Gov. Ted Strickland's budget may dig taxpayers into, setting them up for a big tax increase -- but only after he's re-elected in 2010.
Taylor, a suburban Akron Republican, is the first certified public accountant to be Ohio's auditor; she also earned a master's degree in taxation. We're not talking partisan hack.
Based on the yelps Taylor evoked, she hit a nerve. Strickland harrumphed that Taylor "appears to be advocating for tax increases or severe service cuts at a time when too many Ohioans are struggling to make ends meet." Easy, governor: If you believe Ohio's hospital bookkeepers, and read your own budget "blue book," you were first out of the box with new taxes -- except you call them "fees."
In fact, Ohio's simmering hospitals came so close to a boil that Democratic House Speaker Armond Budish -- to his credit -- is fashioning a compromise to turn down the heat. As proposed by Strickland -- not Taylor, not legislative Republicans -- Strickland's hospital "fee," the Ohio Hospital Association figures, would cost hospitals a net of $411 million over two years, while Budish's compromise would prune the two-year cost to $127 million. Budish said it would cost even less.
Strickland is not a leader. He doesn 't want to make tough decisions. Despite what you will read in the quote below, Taylor is being honest and upfront....Redfern is nothing more than a party hack who is a master of lies and deception...
till, playing Ed McMahon to Johnny Carson, or vice versa, Democratic State Chairman Chris Redfern seconded Strickland: "It's time for Mary Taylor and Ohio Republicans to get honest with the people of Ohio. Either they want a massive tax hike on Ohioans or devastating cuts to" the usual list of sacred causes. Eloquently said, Mr. Chairman, but maybe it's your fellow Democrats who have defaulted on frankness. Taylor's critique wouldn't bite as deeply if Strickland's budget-writers didn't get cute with the English language.
As reported, some administration budget testimony reads like pages from Alice in Wonderland. Asked Alice, of Humpty Dumpty, "The question is, whether you can make words mean so many different things." Humpty replied, "The question is, [who] is to be master -- that's all." If legislators of the GOP persuasion still haven't figured out who the budget master is supposed to be, that's because they're too distracted, leafing through dictionaries, when Budget Director J. Pari Sabety testifies.
In other words, like a typical deceptive lib, Strickland and company are already strangling Ohio dry, and trying to hide taxes in cute word games and leaps of linguistic legerdomain. They have no real solutions. They have no real ideas. All they know is tax and take more of your money....and as they do, businesses like DHL, Ford, and others go running out of the state, as do the young people of the state....
