Our View

Our View

Taking a conservative approach to state spending

We often hear the gloomy state financial rhetoric from a few Democrat state politicians who seemingly find fault in Republican Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s plans to lift the tax burden on struggling middle-class Arkansans, his proposed plans to improve the efficiency of state government while continuing to provide the necessary tax revenues to adequately fund public education, subsidized health care and public safety.

The fear factor propaganda typically focuses on the Republican governor’s fiscal responsibility agenda and his conservative approach to dealing with subsidies and the state government’s handling of public health care to the more than a half-million Arkansans.

There are those Arkansans who will be lead to believe Hutchinson’s leadership and the actions of the majority Republican leadership in Little Rock threatens the safety and welfare of the poor, jeopardizes quality public education and negatively impacts the health care of the countless thousands of Arkansans unable to paying the soaring costs of subsidized health care to the growing number of so-called “poor” and denied to the struggling wage-earners facing soaring premiums.

We’ve been told the tax cuts that have already been approved are having a negative impact on incoming revenues citing tax collections lagging behind the forecast from July through September.

While Department of Finance and Administration officials blame the lower than expected revenues on less than excepted sales and use tax and corporate income tax collections, October revenues actually increased by $39.6 million and even exceeded the state’s forecast by $19.3 million.

Hutchinson’s political critics certainly don’t want to hear that the month’s $530 million in general-revenue collections are a record for an October, outdistancing the $490.4 million collected in October 2015.

These critics don’t want to hear that individual income-tax and sales-and use-tax collections increased in October compared with the same month a year ago.

Also, individual income-tax collections exceeded the forecast in October.

What needs to be understood is these taxes sources finance much of state government and public schools, which are often used by critics of Hutchinson as being put in jeopardy because of his tax cuts and the way he controls costs.

In response to the positive economic news, Gov.

Hutchinson said, “Individual Income taxes are a particularly spot. Even after accounting for the landmark income tax cuts adopted in 2015, we’re still seeing solid growth in individual income tax collections. This is a good sign that more Arkansans are working hard and earning more. In fact, 56,000 Arkansans have moved off the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits in the last year.”

Unfortunately, the number of Arkansans on SNAP or food stamps still exceeds 400,000.

We are confident that Hutchinson and the more conservative lawmakers serving us in Little Rock are very well aware of the current unpredictability of our economy, the need to take a conservative spending approach while also doing everything possible to reduce the tax burden on those citizens within the state who have jobs, struggle to meet their financial responsibilities without depending upon government assistance such as food stamps, subsidized housing, free child care and free health care.