Pawlenty’s ad stretches facts about Hatch, taxes

09/20/2006

BY BILL SALISBURY
Pioneer Press

Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty is airing a new television commercial that accuses his Democratic challenger, Attorney General Mike Hatch, of supporting a 2002 budget proposal that called for 13 tax increases.

The charge is true, but the ad doesn’t tell the whole story.

In 2002, Gov. Jesse Ventura proposed a mix of big spending cuts plus 13 new taxes to dig Minnesota out of a budget hole caused by a slumping economy.

Asked last month how he would have erased that deficit, Hatch replied, “I think we should have adopted the Ventura budget in 2002.” He reiterated that statement Friday.

Ventura’s proposed budget would have added new taxes on cigarettes, gasoline, legal fees, car repairs, school purchases and other goods and services to raise about $400 million in 2002 and 2003. The Legislature, including then-House Majority Leader Pawlenty, rejected Ventura’s plan.

Hatch said that plan was a better alternative than the budget Pawlenty and the Legislature enacted after Pawlenty became governor in 2003.

Over the past four years, he said, the Pawlenty budget has resulted in more than $1 billion in property tax increases and hundreds of millions of dollars in higher fees, tuition increases and a “cigarette tax which he calls a fee.”

“We would have been far better off had we adopted the Ventura budget in 2002 than to go along with this Pawlenty budget in 2003,” he said.

Pawlenty’s budget, however, solved a $4.5 billion budget problem, while Ventura’s was aimed at a $1.95 billion deficit.

But that’s history, Hatch said. He stressed he is not advocating any tax increases now.

Pawlenty’s ad, titled “Taxed Enough,” doesn’t say Hatch is calling for a tax increase.

It opens with an announcer saying, “Gov. Pawlenty solved a massive budget crisis. Mike Hatch says he would have done it differently — with 13 new tax increases. Mike Hatch would’ve put a new tax on school spending, car repairs, even a higher gas tax.”

Then Pawlenty appears on the screen and says, “Minnesotans are taxed enough. That’s why I’ve kept a lid on state taxes and even vetoed a gas tax increase.”

He goes on to say he wants to cap property taxes.

Pawlenty campaign spokesman Brian McClung acknowledged that Hatch is not proposing tax increases. But “we know Mike Hatch’s history” of supporting higher taxes, he said, and Hatch is making spending promises he couldn’t keep without additional revenue.

Hatch said the ad shows Pawlenty is desperate. “He has to go negative, and he has to distort,” he said.

Pawlenty’s 30-second spot began airing Friday on TV stations in the Twin Cities, Rochester, Moorhead and Mankato.