Ads paint Huckabee as taxer, but record more complicated

Leslie Wayne, New York Times
Sunday, December 2, 2007

As Mike Huckabee rises in the Republican presidential polls, fiscal conservatives have been raising alarms about a series of tax increases he spearheaded while governor of Arkansas - new taxes on gasoline, nursing home beds and even pet groomers.

The Club for Growth, a politically influential anti-tax group, has dubbed Huckabee Tax Hike Mike and poured money into anti-Huckabee advertisements that were broadcast in early-nominating states, with more on the way. Huckabee "spends money like a drunken sailor," according to the group's news releases, and it has sprinkled YouTube and the airways with videos that mock him and his policies.

But the record offers a more complex and nuanced picture. While taxes did rise in the 10 years that Huckabee was governor, the portrayal of him as a wild-eyed spendthrift is hardly apt. For the most part, Huckabee's tax initiatives had wide bipartisan support, with the small number of Republicans in the overwhelmingly Democratic state Legislature voting for the tax increases and many maintaining that the state was better for them.

In addition, when Huckabee left office in January, he had turned a $200 million budget shortfall into an $844 million surplus. Still, as the attacks on his fiscal policies have stepped up, the Huckabee campaign has also cited examples of about 90 taxes that went down under his tenure. But on balance, tax increases outweighed the tax cuts by nearly $500 million.

The biggest increase under Huckabee was mandated by the Arkansas Supreme Court, which in 2002 ruled that the state's school financing procedure was unconstitutional and ordered a more equitable plan - which led to $400 million in new taxes.

Some other taxes came about directly because of Huckabee's efforts. After becoming governor in 1996, he traveled the length of the Arkansas River within the state to win support for an additional one-eighth-cent sales tax to improve the state parks system.

Early in his tenure, Huckabee pushed through a 3-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax increase and a 4-cent increase on diesel fuel, along with a bond issue, to improve a road system that was considered one of the worst in the country.

And when the state lacked enough of the necessary matching money for federal Medicaid payments to its nursing homes, Huckabee and the Legislature enacted a $5.25-per-day "bed tax" on nursing homes, which won the grudging approval of the state's nursing home industry.

All of this has become fodder for the Club for Growth and other anti-tax groups. At the Republican YouTube debate on Wednesday, an advertisement shown by a rival candidate, Fred Thompson, directly attacked Huckabee's tax policies.

"We've been making noise about Huckabee since Day 1 of his candidacy," said Nachama Soloveichik, a spokeswoman for the Club for Growth, which analyzes the tax policies of Republican candidates. "There is a groundswell among conservatives that this cannot be our guy."

Both Democratic and Republican politicians and political observers say the Legislature had little choice but to raise taxes from 2002 to 2004 given the fiscal challenges facing Arkansas.

The biggest tax increases came in 2003 and 2004. A sagging economy had cut into revenues, and the state faced the 2002 court order to equalize financing among school districts.

"We had our backs against the wall; we had no choice," said state Sen. Bobby Glover, a Democrat who has been in the Legislature off and on since 1973. "Our only other choice was to take more from prisons and heath care and other agencies."

In the end, the $400 million tax increase package was passed by an overwhelming majority, with Republican legislators taking the lead in pushing for it along with Democrats.

In general, Huckabee supported tax increases when he had a defined goal in mind, whether it was schools, roads or parks.

"He tended to raise taxes for specific government programs," said Jay Barth, an associate political science professor at Hendrix College in Conway, Ark. "He does believe in a robust government as an active force in the lives of its citizens, especially in helping the little guy."

The Club for Growth is circulating a video of Huckabee speaking to the Legislature and going through a litany of all the taxes he could support, leaving the impression that there is no tax he would not embrace.

But the purpose of Huckabee's address was specific: Arkansas was facing a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall and Huckabee was pleading for a tax increase to cover it - any tax, and listing all the possibilities.

In the face of criticism from fiscally conservative Republicans, Huckabee has been spending more time talking about the taxes he cut than the ones he raised. For instance, at the Republican debate last week, Huckabee said that he had cut 90 taxes and that the sales tax was only a penny higher under his stewardship.

Of the 90 tax cuts cited by Huckabee, one was large: an increase in the standard deduction for income taxes. But most were very small, with some reducing state tax revenues by as little as $15,000 to $20,000, according to an Arkansas Department of Finance and Administration study that was reported in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Still, the Huckabee campaign has set up a "Truth Squad" specifically intended to rebut the Club for Growth.

"Anti-tax radicals will never be convinced that tax monies can be legitimately spent on highways, bridges, schools and Medicare," the campaign said in a response to the Club for Growth.


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This article appeared on page A - 20 of the San Francisco Chronicle



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