University Daily Kansan / Wednesday, July 25, 1990
5
No New (Hampshire) taxes
In New Hampshire, where George Bush learned lip reading, taxes are a prime issue in a state campaign mirroring the financial squeeze that finally forced the district to withdraw his no-new-tax vow.
Gov. Judd Gregg says Bush made a mistake when he dropped the barrier against raising federal taxes, Gregg, seeking a second term, isn't budging from his own pledge against a state sales or income tax, although he presided over a round of increases in most existing levies.
"He has raised taxes more than any other governor in history," said J. Joseph Grandmaison, a former Democratic state chairman, one of three candidates for the nomination to oppose Gregg.
New Hamphire has neither a general sales nor an income tax, and the pledge to keep it that way has been made. The insignias, a line breached only by leopers.
"It has served us well," Gregg said in an interview. "We continue to be the lowest-taxed state in the country on the basis of personal income."
The governor said the New Hampshire tax system works to keep a reim on government by restricting state revenues.
Most campaign years, the pledge against a broad-based tax has been unanimous among the contenders in both parties. Robert Preston, minority leader of the state Senate, has taken that pledge in his bid for the Democratic nomination for governor.
The other two Democratic candidates in the Sept. 11 primary are talking of tax change. Grandmaison said the system should be reviewed and informed, ending the era of no tax on corporations. But he isn't proposing a specific formula. Paul Blacketor, a state representative and college professor, recommends a state income tax.
Walter R.
Mears
Syndicated
columnist
These are perilous campaign positions. That lesson was reinforced when John Summ, now the White House chief of staff, was elected governor in 1882, upsetting a Democrat who escaped away from the orthodox ban against sales or income tax, which he had imposed on a primary a decade earlier.
In 1988, when Vice President Bush limped into the New Hampshire presidential primary campaign after losing his first campaign test in ita, the no-tax issue was tailored to his needs. Sumuun ran the campaign in which Bush and his barrage of camouflaged commercials depicted Sen. Bob Dole as Republican. The tactic helped Bush overtake Dole to win the primary; he had no more trouble on his way to the GOP nomination.
The tax pledge became a staple of the Bush campaign, and eventually a one-liner:
"Read my lips: no new taxes."
"Read my nips: no new taxes." That gave way late last month to a Bush concession that there will have to be tax revenue increases to cope with a swollen federal budget deficit. Bush said he'd had to rethink his position in changing circumstances. Sununu resisted the tax retreat.
Gregg, a former House member, said Bush made a mistake when he dropped the tax bar without a Democratic commitment to slash spending.
"My experience in Congress is that they'll take all the taxes you'll give them, and spend it," he said.
He said Bush's concession on taxes muted a basic Republican theme. "It blurs the distinction between the parties," Gregg said.
But the governor said it won't hurt the GOP in New Hampshire, where conservative Republicans are abeautists on the tax issue, both federal and state. Gregg said he'll try to cope with slumping state revenues and an increasing' deficit with spending curbs, not with a broad-based tax.
Property taxes have spiraled upward, stirring signs of the kind of tax rebellion that has hit elsewhere. It shows in town votes to turn down local school budgets. Rising property taxes have become a stalk of talk-radio programs. A poll conducted this spring by American Research Group of Manchester showed that 57 percent of those surveyed were opposed to a state sales tax, but 58 percent would favor one if it came with a guarantee that the revenues would be used to cut property taxes.
New Hampshire already has raised the rates on its assortment of state taxes, and imposed a new 5 percent communications tax.
"Our reliance on the property tax is inherently unfair." he said.
He said any proposed tax bill would have to provide for the return of revenues to the towns to ease the burden. "We couldn't stand a chance of enactment,
Grandmaison is banking on those attitudes as he proposes changing a system in which more than 60 percent of combined state and local revenues come from property taxes. The national average is 20 percent.
Gregg said that won't work and New Hampshire voters know it.
"You don't reduce taxes by raising taxes," he said. "That's medicine man politics."
> Walter Mears is a vice president and columnist for the Associated Press.
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