Reality Check: Talking Taxes In Political Ads

"Letter to Editor"

09/21/2006

Pat Kessler
Reporting

(WCCO) The top two candidates for governor in Minnesota are trying to break away from each other by talking taxes in political ads now airing on television.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s ad does not explicitly say that DFL gubernatorial candidate Mike Hatch will raise taxes if he’s elected, but that’s what it strongly implies and it distorts Hatch’s position.

“Governor Pawlenty solved a massive budget crisis,” Pawlenty’s ad said. “Mike Hatch says he would have done it differently—with 13 new tax increases.”

This is MISLEADING. Pawlenty is deliberately lumping together two different deficits.

In 2002, Gov. Jesse Ventura proposed deep cuts and 13 tax hikes to erase a nearly $2 billion deficit which Attorney General Hatch said he supported. 

The next year, 2003, the newly elected Gov. Pawlenty faced a different deficit of $4.5 billion.

Hatch never said he’d support raising taxes for that deficit, though he criticizes Pawlenty’s budget cuts.

“Minnesotans are taxed enough,” Pawlenty said in his ad. “That’s why I’ve kept a lid on state taxes and even vetoed a gas tax increase.”

IN FACT, Hatch said he does not support general tax increases, including a gas tax hike if he is elected, but Hatch does support a $300 million tax increase on corporations doing business outside the country.

Now Minnesota Democrats are responding to Pawlenty with questionable claims of their own. 

“Pawlenty pledged he wouldn’t raise taxes, but his cuts to local governments forced property taxes up a billion dollars,” said a Minnesota DFL Party ad. “His cuts to state colleges forced tuition up 50 percent.”

The numbers are right, but it’s an EXAGGERATION to say it’s all Pawlenty’s fault.

Pawlenty imposed deep cuts to local governments and colleges, with help from Democrats. 

Local governments and colleges said they have had to raise taxes and tuition but critics said they could have cut more to make up for lost state aid.

DFLers are closer to the mark on whether Pawlenty fudges his no-tax-hike pledge. 

“So when Tim Pawlenty tells you he didn’t raise taxes, he’s just playing word games,” the DFL ad said. “Fact is, you’re paying .. Pawlenty.”

This is FAIR.  Pawlenty promised no “general” tax hikes, and he kept that promise, but he didn’t say anything about property taxes, user fees, college tuition, co-pays or deductibles.

All of them are up on his watch, about $1 billion.

That’s Reality Check.