Pittsburg Examiner
Taxes—relief or burden—fuel Kasich, FitzGerald face off
August 31, 2013

For Ohio shoppers who want to save on spending, the slogan for this Labor Day weekend is 'Buy Before Sunday,' the day anything subject to the sales tax will cost more.

Thanks can be directed at the tax package Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich and a Republican-led legislature designed that included a sales tax increase. The sales tax increase amounts to .25 percent from 5.5 to 5.75 percent overall, which equates to 25 cents for every $100 purchase.

Based on the decades old Ronald Reagan-Jack Kemp belief that lowering income tax rates for individuals and small businesses alike will create jobs and grow prosperity, the main revenue source chosen to subsidize across the board tax cuts, which has been shown to only really benefit the wealthiest, was an increase in the sales tax and an expansion of it to sectors of the economy previously exempted from it.

Now that Ohio's new two-year $62 billion budget, the largest in state history, has been law for nearly three months, Gov. Kasich and state Republican leaders are out pushing it hard on Labor Day weekend, before it starts.

Ohio Republican Party Chairman [ORP] Matt Borges praised the $2.7 billion tax relief plan, put into place by Governor Kasich and legislative Republican leaders, which takes effect this Labor Day weekend.

"Thanks to the efforts of Governor John Kasich and legislative leaders like Senate President Keith Faber and House Speaker Bill Batchelder, Ohio's workers are getting a pay raise for Labor Day," Borges said Friday in remarks prepared for media.

In his executive budget, Kasich had proposed larger tax cuts, but he couldn't control a GOP legislature that went rogue on him when removed or altered portions of his budget in response to concerns voiced by Tea Party activists that lawmakers should not expand Medicaid coverage as the Affordable Health Care law [Obamacare] allows. But as part of the tax plan that did pass, Buckeye workers will see income tax rates cut by almost 9 percent this year, and small businesses can expect a 50 percent cut in tax rates on their first $250,000 dollars of income.

Under Republican and Gov. Kasich's leadership, the ORP said more than 170,000 new jobs have been created, hourly wages are rising and its exports are up 17 percent.

But so are Democrats, including Kasich's all-but nominated Democratic opponent next year Ed FitzGerald, who the nationally respected Public Policy Polling has beating Kasich by three percentage points in it's latest state poll. FitzGerald, who trails Kasich in campaign cash and recognition but who appears more in tune with issues relating to demographic and culturally changes, has his own views of Kasich's cuts...

Read the rest of the article at the Pittsburg Examiner