DALLAS – Proposed cuts in the Arkansas state income tax could unlock the jail cells of bad guys and force the elderly from their nursing homes, warned Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Ross.
Ross said Friday that the plan favored by Republican candidate Asa Hutchinson for phased cuts in the income tax would endanger funding for public safety and education in Arkansas.
“When you start talking about cutting taxes, unless you are talking about shifting the burden to other taxes, you are talking about laying off teachers, you are talking about kicking seniors out of the nursing home, and you are talking about letting murderers and rapists out of prison,” Ross said Aug. 16 at the Political Animals Club in Little Rock.
Ross said he favored tax cuts to encourage economic development whenever the state posts a budget surplus.
“I think it needs to be done in a way that can be paid for, and it needs to target working families and seniors, and it needs to target job creation,” he said.
The income tax generated $3.14 billion of the state’s $5 billion of general fund revenue in fiscal 2013.
Hutchinson said Ross’s remarks were stale campaign rhetoric.
“Mike Ross is embracing the same position President Obama holds, insisting we can’t set out to cut government or make tax relief a priority,” Hutchinson said.
Ross, a former congressman, is the only Democratic candidate so far to file for the state’s top post.
Current Gov. Mike Beebe, a Democrat, cannot run in 2014 due to term limitations. Beebe endorsed Ross at a campaign rally Aug. 17.
Beebe said Ross is “somebody who would knock down a door that needed to be knocked down to take care of the people that elected him.”
Hutchinson is also a former congressman and one-time deputy undersecretary at the federal Department of Homeland Security. Two other Republicans have entered the race.
Hutchinson ran unsuccessfully against Beebe in 2006.
