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Toledo
Blade…
Parties
play football with Ohio’s
gains
Dems, GOP each claim credit claim
credit
By Tom Troy
It’s
a standard part of Gov. John
Kasich’s political stump speeches these days: “Ohio’s on a comeback
now.”
Mr.
Kasich brags about the state’s
growing rainy-day fund and its rapid gains in job creation.
But
he never mentions his
Democratic predecessor, Ted Strickland, or the Democratic President in
the
White House.
“We
went from 48th in job creation
in the nation to fourth and first in the Midwest. Ohio’s rockin’ it,”
Mr.
Kasich told a Republican audience in the rural Cincinnati suburb of
Owensville
on Wednesday.
“We
didn’t raise taxes to deal with
our problems. We made government work. We skinnied it down. From $8
billion in
the hole we now have a balanced budget in the state of Ohio. We went
from 89
cents in our rainy-day fund — and I know toddlers who have more than 89
cents
in their piggy banks — to a half billion in our rainy-day fund.”
Talk
like that drives the Democrats
crazy.
Mr.
Kasich’s speech to the
Republican National Convention in August prompted a detailed response
from the
Ohio Democratic Party pointing primarily to the impact that the rebound
in the
auto industry had on Ohio employment.
“It’s
clear that our state is on a
path to recovery, despite Governor Kasich and Mitt Romney’s failure to
support
the most significant economic investment we’ve had,” said Chris
Redfern, Ohio
Democratic Party chairman .
Ohio
is indeed in economic comeback
mode.
The
question of who gets credit is
one that will be asked over and over again during the next two years as
Democrats coalesce around a candidate and Republicans gear up to try to
re-elect Mr. Kasich to another four years in office.
The
comeback started under Mr. Kasich’s
predecessor and picked up steam since Governor Kasich took office.
To
Democrats, there is an obvious
explanation — the 2009 auto industry rescue that President Obama pushed
through, and which Republicans opposed…
Read
the rest of the article at The
Toledo Blade
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