Blog Archive

I don’t have access to the actual polling questions, but get a load of this Dayton Daily News story:

If given a choice between cutting services for the sick, hungry and abused or raising taxes on businesses and wealthy families, Ohioans are all for boosting taxes, according to a new survey released Wednesday March 25.

Fifty-seven percent of Ohio voters favor rolling back some recent income tax breaks and increasing some business taxes and taxes on people making more than $200,000 as a way to avoid service cuts, according to Hart Research Associates’ telephone poll of 602 registered Ohio voters.

The poll was commissioned by a coalition of human services groups that are lobbying lawmakers to keep money in the state budget to help food pantries, public schools, child welfare agencies and mental health services.

Notice the way the question is put in the first sentence.  Forced to choose between “cutting services for the sick, hungry and abused” and “raising taxes on businesses and wealthy families” people choose the latter.  Shocking, I know.

Would you rather people go without food or remain in abusive situations or would you rather rich people pay a little more?  Tough question, right?  But anyone who has worked on the state budget knows it isn’t quite that simple.

But the format is not all that surprising given who paid for the poll.  I do wonder how cold hearted the 43% who voted not to raise taxes must be.  Very unpatriotic of them too.

The article also points out one large example of GOP failure:

The poll found that 62 percent of Ohioans are worried about jobs and the economy while only 14 percent name state and local taxes as among their top concerns. The state adopted a 21-percent across the board income tax reduction that is being phased in over five years. Republicans herald it as a crucial step toward making Ohio business friendly. But only 8 percent of the poll respondents knew that state income tax rates had been lowered.

Nice work, Republicans.  You actually cut taxes and no one seems to even know about it!  I believe the young kids call this message = FAIL.

The question is whether just because the people aren’t aware of it that means they won’t care if their taxes go up again.  I can guarantee you that Governor Ted Strickland doesn’t believe that is true.  (And I have a feeling by tax day most people will be happy about the cuts whether they recognize how they came about or not.)

But a great many of the liberal interest groups that support Strickland would like to convince him it is.  They have been upset about the tax cuts from the get go and want to play the game of only raise taxes on the rich.

The bad news is that these “rich” folks – and that definition gets quite tricky – are exactly the folks who grow the economy.  They start business, hire people, invest in things, etc.

It is tempting to think that you can just raise the taxes on wealthy people ever so slightly and thus avoid the devastating cuts to the poor, hungry, and destitute that this difficult budget presents.

But a dynamic and growing economy is what raises standards of living and promotes the kind of charitable giving and stable budgets that provides for a social saftey net.

Raising taxes is not the answer. But watch social services advanacy groups try to make the case in the coming weeks and months.  This poll is just a sneak peak into their mindset.