Arkansans Criticize Huckabee’s Budgets.
Once again proving folks that Mr Huckabee is truly NOT a conservative like Mitt Romney
By LISA ROSSI • REGISTER AMES BUREAU • December 15, 2007
Some former Arkansas legislators said Friday in a conference call organized by the Mitt Romney campaign that Mike Huckabee had overspent as governor, which hurt the state’s Republican Party.
More questions about Huckabee’s reputation as governor of Arkansas have been raised since his recent rise to the front of the presidential race in Iowa.
AdvertisementOn Friday, two former legislators and one current one blasted his record on spending while in the Arkansas Statehouse.
“We kind of felt abandoned as fiscal conservatives,” said former Arkansas Rep. Jim Hendren, a Republican. Arkansas Rep. Donna Hutchinson, a Republican, criticized Huckabee for his ideas on immigration while in office.
Jake Files, a former Republican Arkansas legislator, said that during Huckabee’s tenure, government spending more than doubled: From 1996 to 2006, spending increased from $6.6 billion to $16.1 billion, he said.
Files hasn’t endorsed anyone for president. Hendren and Hutchinson both said they were supporting Romney.
The new wave of criticism represents a departure from the brief detente between Romney and Huckabee, who refrained from criticizing each other at The Des Moines Register’s Republican debate this week.
After the debate, Huckabee told reporters he apologized to Romney for remarks he made for a New York Times Magazine article that appeared to challenge Romney’s Mormon religion.
The jabs behind the scenes reignited shortly thereafter.
“It’s amazing that, you know, Romney keeps talking about Ronald Reagan all the time, (but) the second he gets behind the polls, he attacks some of the Republicans, breaking the 11th commandment,” said Eric Woolson, Huckabee’s press secretary in Iowa. The oft-quoted “commandment” associated with Reagan was “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican.”
Woolson said Republicans who cited increased spending during Huckabee’s administration were citing numbers that included federal Medicaid money, which increased in all states, not just in Arkansas.
Mike Stormes, an administrator in the Arkansas department of finance and administration, said it’s more accurate to judge Huckabee on the budgets for which he actually had influence.
He became governor in July of 1996, while the government was operating in fiscal year 1997. The first budget for which Huckabee offered a proposal was for the years 1998 and 1999 during the state’s biennial budget negotiations.
Under that analysis, spending increased from $8.4 billion in expenditures in 1998 to $16.5 billion in 2007, Stormes said.
He cited inflation, court-mandated money spent on education, higher education spending, more department of human services spending, increased Medicaid dollars, and highway spending as reasons for the increased overall Arkansas government spending.
Huckabee has also been criticized by the fiscally conservative organization Club for Growth, which will air television ads in Iowa and South Carolina critical of tax increases that occurred during his administration.
The Ron Paul campaign has also organized opposition to Huckabee. The campaign paid the travel costs for two Arkansas Republicans — former Rep. Randy Minton and former Sen. Jim Holt — to talk in Iowa this week about Huckabee’s record.
A group of Huckabee supporters from Arkansas was also brought to Iowa to address some of the criticisms, Huckabee’s staff said.
Doug Matayo was among that group. Matayo, a former Republican legislator, said Huckabee’s record showed he was a fiscal conservative.
“Each year, he balanced the budget as he was required to do, but also the governor at the beginning of his tenure was able to push through the first and only broad-based tax cut we’ve had in our state since Reconstruction,” he said.
Matayo also praised Huckabee for his work to improve the state’s infrastructure and roads.
“I think it is conservative and good sound fiscal policy for a governor to focus on infrastructure like he did,” he said.
December 16th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
The Romney campaign is not really breaking the “11th commandment,” because Huckabee is not really a republican. I truly believe that if it were not for the Democrat’s stands on a couple of key social issues, that Huckabee would register as a Democrat.
December 17th, 2007 at 6:52 am
We’re not residents of AR so don’t pay much attention to elections and state budgets there. We live in Missouri. However, we bought a 2nd home there 3-1/2 years ago. No way we would ever buy anything there unless we had to . . . because taxes are so much higher there. Example: We can buy gas for $2.71/gal. on the border in Missouri today. Just across the border, it’s $2.97! 26 cents difference. So, of you filled a 30-gallon tank, that’s a $7.80 difference.
Shortly after we bought this place, we began to notice the complete absence of color in the region. Not the fall foliage, either. We asked a neighbor about it and learned that our neighborhood chapter of the KKK is in nearby Zinc, AR. He said, “They just don’t come around here.”
Driving around the area, the first thing we noticed is all the garbage people dump around their houses, often just thrown out the windows & doors! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life! Major home appliances (refigerators, stoves, laundry machines), your regular solid waste (tin cans, etc.), and whatever else one can imagine. Absolute “zip” concern for the environment!
I’ve not seen any stats, but there must be huge numbers of children who have never gone to public schools living way back in the woods. Last Christmas, a friend drove me to a home that looked like it was ready to cave in. He was delivering some gifts for the kids who came out of the house looking like they’d worn their clothes for 25 years. He said I’d be even more surprised to see Grandma . . . who sits by the wood stove all day long during the colder months feeding it with wood. Arkansas is strictly hillbilly country, LOADED with welfare recipients. This place was crawling with no fewer than 20 stray dogs looking for a meal. Old cars stacked all over amidst all the heaps of junk. No one knows who the kids belong to, but my friend suspects their uncle who lives on the same family property in a rusted-out mobile home does the job.
What kind steward would any state governor (or governor’s wife) be over such a shameful situation? Look out folks! We’ve got 2 pretty strong candidates in the making!
December 17th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Big article front page of The Wall Street Journal today about Huckabee’s support from Evangelicals. Goes back to my post a few days about about how, if Duckabee wins, it will be soley because of the religious lemmings who ignore all the facts about him.