The good stuff
Wednesday, May 7th, 2008 By Mike MaurerIt was a small crowd at today’s Ways and Means Committee hearing at which Rep. John Adams, R-Sidney, gave sponsor testimony for H.B. 534. The bill would phase out Ohio’s personal income tax over 10 years.
By my count, there were only 14 people present, and all of them looked to be pros - staffers, journalists and ne’er do wells.
Mostly the testimony brought out posturing posing as inquiry. The chairmen of the committees ought to do a better job policing this behavior, requiring questioners to pose actual questions, rather than merely to pose. (Of course, I should eat less, and exercise, too.)
When a representative says that the budget is made up of Medicaid, education and prisons, and then says, “Which of those three areas would you like to cut?”, that’s posturing.
And it only leads to more posturing, when the response is, “I’m not here to talk about cuts.”
But for all of that, and there was quite a bit of it, there was also some pretty basic discussion of fundamental viewpoints. The prize for forthrightness goes to Rep. Robert Hagan, D-Youngstown, who said, “I’m going to fight you on this.”
Adams did a fine job of it, but perhaps the most on-point comment was from Rep. Larry Wolpert, R-Hilliard, who made explicit the idea that no one was talking about cuts; the point was only to limit the rate of growth in expenditure. Keep that reasonably flat and your revenues will catch up.
Of course, that was the same argument used in support of the TEL, and I don’t recall that received a whole lot of support when it was up.
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