BlogWood: MT Archives

Brothers divorced from reality

President Governor Bush remains adamant that lowering taxes leads to increased job growth, despite real numbers that continue to prove him wrong. President Governor Bush pushed tax breaks and watched as jobs were lost during his first term, the worst record for a President since the great depression. job growth in the state fell to the lowest level since 1970.

State employment figures show that Gov. Jeb Bush has presided over the lowest job-creation rate of any governor since 1970, appearing to call into question his claim that his tax cuts have created new jobs.

Bush, who is proposing $285 million in new tax cuts this year, has for years attributed the state's creation of new jobs during his tenure to his tax cuts, which have totaled $11 billion since he took office.

"This notion has been proven," he said during a Jan. 12 news conference. "It has been proven in our state by the economic data that we see."

But an analysis of statistics from Bush's Agency for Workforce Innovation shows that every previous governor going back as far as Reubin Askew enjoyed higher job-growth rates than Bush — even though those earlier governors all raised taxes.

Lawton Chiles, Bush's Democratic predecessor, had an average job growth rate of 2.7 percent over his eight years, compared with Bush's 1.9 percent over six years.

Republican Bob Martinez, Bush's former boss, had a 4 percent average over four years.

Democrat Bob Graham had a 4.7 percent average, and Democrat Askew enjoyed a 5.1 percent average.

With the exception of Martinez, each of the previous governors, like Bush, suffered through a recession, with Askew taking the worst hit during the mid-'70s oil crisis that devastated the state's tourism industry.

Moreover, each of the four previous governors had significant tax increases during his term.

Chiles raised the intangibles tax on investment portfolios.

Martinez raised the intangibles tax, the sales tax and the real estate transaction tax.

Graham, while he lowered the property tax for homeowners, raised the sales tax a full penny, as did Martinez.

And Askew, who had the highest growth rate of all the recent governors, also had the largest new tax — a corporate income tax, which he pushed during his campaign as a ballot question.