Keary McCarthy · January 26, 2015

Kasich’s Contradiction

No amount of message reframing will change the fact that conservative economic policies hurt poor and middle-class families.  In Ohio, under Gov. John Kasich:

1. Lower-income Ohioans now pay more as a share of their income in taxes than those at the top;

2. State funding for education is now at its lowest share of the state budget since 1997 – the same year that the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that our school funding system was unconstitutional; and

3. State funding to communities has been cut in half, which means that those who can afford them the least have to pick up a greater share of the tab for basic quality-of-life issues such as police and fire protection, trash collection and road repair.

Gov. Kasich’s inaugural address focused on lifting up the poor. Because of the Affordable Care Act, Ohio was able to expand Medicaid. As I pointed out in a column in The Dispatch over the weekend, as far as policies that lift up the poor under Gov. John Kasich, Medicaid expansion is the exception not the rule. Perhaps this could change in the upcoming state budget, which is due out in the first week of February.  The state budget is a massive document that affects every level of state government and can impact the lives of Ohioans in every corner of the state. As we prepare for this year’s upcoming budget debate, we thought it would be helpful to look back at some of the more notable provisions from the last state budget. We’ll be sharing our analyses from the last budget over the course of the week on Twitter and Facebook.