Hewitt- Huckabee

By way of the Conservative Grapevine, we see Hewitt has an interview up with Huckabee.

Huckabee has some serious problems, particularly with his insisting on raising gasoline taxes… like that’s what the American family needs is more taxes… over and about the $3.20 we’re already paying.  And that’s not the only tax he’s raised, of course.  There’s a list of all of it you can get…(PDF)

Here’s a little:

Governor Huckabee touts himself as an economic conservative, writing in his biography that he “pushed through the Arkansas legislature the first major, broad-based tax cuts in state history” and “led efforts to establish a Property Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights” early on as governor (Arkansas Times 09/22/05), but he only offers a small piece of the picture. It is true that Governor Huckabee fought for an $80 million tax cut package in 1997 that was passed by the Arkansas legislature (Cato Policy Analysis No. 315, 09/03/98); cut the state capital gains tax in 1999 (The Commercial Appeal 02/29/99); and passed the Property Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights in the same year, limiting the increase in property taxes to 10% a year for individuals and 5% per taxing unit (AP 03/16/99). However, his record over the rest of his ten-year tenure tells a starkly different story.

• Immediately upon taking office, Governor Huckabee signed a sales tax hike in 1996 to fund the Games and Fishing Commission and the Department of Parks and Tourism (Cato Policy Analysis No. 315, 09/03/98).
• He supported an internet sales tax in 2001 (Americans for Tax Reform 01/07/07).
• He publicly opposed the repeal of a sales tax on groceries and medicine in 2002 (Arkansas News Bureau 08/30/02).
• He signed bills raising taxes on gasoline (1999), cigarettes (2003) (Americans for Tax Reform 01/07/07), and a $5.25 per day bed-tax on private nursing home patients in 2001 (Arkansas New Bureau 03/01/01).
• He proposed another sales take hike in 2002 to fund education improvements (Arkansas News Bureau 12/05/02).
• He opposed a congressional measure to ban internet taxes in 2003 (Arkansas News Bureau 11/21/03).
• In 2004, he allowed a 17% sales tax increase to become law (The Gurdon Times 03/02/04).

By the end of his ten-year tenure, Governor Huckabee was responsible for a 37% higher sales tax in Arkansas, 16% higher motor fuel taxes, and 103% higher cigarette taxes according to Americans for Tax Reform (01/07/07), garnering a lifetime grade of D from the free-market Cato Institute.

Not my first choice for the job… and no, I don’t care what his excuse is. He’s still better than any of the Democrats, but not much.