Huckabee V. The Club For Growth
Meet Gov. Mike Huckabee's most dogged critic: the Club for Growth.
Today, flanked by clergy, union members and business leaders, Huckabee signed $1.10 worth of a minimum wage increase into law.
You can bet your bottom dollar on it: many fiscal conservative activists consider such actions tantamount to a tax on business.
Huckabee's action marks the fifth time, per the Club, that the AR governor has raised taxes.
The conclusion of the Club's government affairs director, Andy Roth: "Mike Huckabee is a liberal."
Huckabee has noticed the Club's heckles and he was uncharacteristially curt when asked about their accuracy.
Well, The Club for Growth, in a typical fashion, acts more like a talk show host than they do a serious seeker of facts and they have a lot of nice tools that they use for their own fund raising mechanism to show that they're champions of conservatism, but I find their message sometimes appalling. For example, one of the taxes they claimed that I had supported, I -- in fact -- didn't sign. I don't have much of a veto power in Arkansas."
Huckabee notes that he's cut taxes and pushed through the legislature a property taxpayer bill of rights. He defends a gas tax increase by noting that an overwhelming majority of Arkansans supported it and he, the governor, makes no apology for fixing the state's dilapidated roadways.
Two of the most potent conservative interest groups in IA are the Iowa Christian Coalition (now remaned the Iowa Christian Alliance) and Iowans for Tax Relief. (The third is the NRA.)
Huckabee, an evangelical Baptist minister, is a most authentic hero to one. He might not be beloved by the other when the Club is finished with him.
You did not even catch his 3% beer tax, passed in 2001 as a "temporary" tax but extended twice since then, the "Bed Tax" on nursing home beds (Act 635 of 2001), the 5% Rental Car tax in 2001 (Act 949), the 1% simulcast tax in 2001, or the fact that Huckabee was the major public spokesperson for a *constitutional amendment* establishing a dedicated 1/8-cent "conservation tax" while he was still Light Gov. This doesn't cover the multiple "fee increases" he has used to jack state revenue without "raising taxes".
You guys don't have the half of it.