Ohio Archives | Page 6 of 7

Oct 05 2012

The numbers are the numbers …

Quick Friday note on today’s good news that the unemployment rate in the U.S. is below 8 percent for the first time in quite awhile. According to the New York Times:

The unemployment rate fell because more people were working, not because discouraged job seekers stopped looking, the numbers showed. Adding to the positive news, job gains were revised upward by 40,000 for July (to 181,000) and by 46,000 for August (to 142,000), casting a slightly rosier light on what had been perceived as a summer slump.

Then there’s this according to former General Electric CEO Jack Welch: [Read more…]

Sep 27 2012

Ohio’s auto industry has added 17,315 jobs since rescue latest data say

The importance of Ohio’s auto industry to the state’s economy is underscored once again today as the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics quarterly census of employment and wage data shows 17,315 jobs added since the federal rescue. This being a political season – and the auto rescue being a political football – there has been much back and forth about just how much effect the rescue has had. Take a look at the chart below. The IO research staff has compiled and tracked the BLS since our first report on the importance of the auto rescue earlier this year. We look at the “direct jobs” in the ‘auto cluster’ in the following North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) groups:

NAICS 336100 Motor Vehicle Manufacturing
NAICS 336200 Motor Vehicle Body and Trailer Manufacturing
NAICS 336300 Motor Vehicle Parts Manufacturing

GOP partisans are responsible for the confusion about auto industry job creation in Ohio since the rescue. Gov. John Kasich has purposefully low-balled the number as has the Columbus Dispatch. Here’s as unvarnished as we can make the truth:

Sep 19 2012

Medicaid Expansion in 2014 No Brainer for Ohio

About a month ago, IO issued a call to the Kasich Administration to take advantage of the Medicaid expansion authorized for state governments under the Affordable Care Act. Today, the Akron Beacon Journal adds mightily to the argument for our state to participate in an editorial. It reads in part:

When the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act, it altered one major provision in the law. Instead of a virtual mandate, the court gave state governments flexibility in deciding whether to expand Medicaid coverage to uninsured citizens with annual incomes up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level. The encouraging indication is that Gov. John Kasich plans to have a decision for Ohio sometime during the coming year. A commitment to expand Medicaid should not be difficult to make. The federal contribution to an expanded Medicaid program begins Jan. 1, 2014, and it is not insignificant. For the first three years, Washington will pay 100 percent of the cost for the newly eligible. The federal share will be scaled down over the next three years and thereafter to 90 percent. In effect, states that expand from the beginning gain the full benefit of the generous federal match. That is an incentive in itself to get in at the start.

The Beacon Journal goes on to lay out the case based on the overwhelming benefits to Ohio families and our economy. Read it and pass it on to your friends and family. To add to the argument for expansion, let’s also take a look back at what we said on July 30. In short, Medicaid expansion has been shown to save lives:

Innovation Ohio, a progressive think tank headquartered in Columbus, today cited a new study in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine which suggested that expanding Medicaid eligibility as called for in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) could prevent 3,400 Ohio deaths per year. The think tank also called on Gov. Kasich to support Medicaid expansion, saying that “being pro-life should include more than just being anti-abortion.” According to the study, published July 25th, Harvard University School of Public Health researchers found that for every 176 adults covered under expanded Medicaid, one death per year would be prevented. The study compared three states (Arizona, New York and Maine) that have already expanded Medicaid coverage for low-income citizens with four neighboring states that had not. Deaths in the three expansion states dropped by 6% per year, while deaths in non-expansion states went up. Read the report here. According to the Kasich administration’s Office of Health Transformation, 597,500 adults would qualify for Medicaid in 2014 if the program is expanded according to ACA guidelines. Using the study’s formula of one death prevented for every 176 adults covered, expanded Medicaid coverage in Ohio would yield 3,395 fewer deaths per year than would occur without it.

Sep 19 2012

Grand Old History: GOP Used to Support a Hand Up

What we thought we were going to get this week from Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was more detail about how he would move the country forward and create the booming economy he’s been promising on the trail. Instead, he’s divided the country down the middle between so-called “makers” and “takers” and turned his back on compassionate conservatism. Let’s not belabor the secret video in which Mitt Romney speaks with smug self-assurance and disdain about the 47%, but let’s not let it slide either. When you consider the facts that he was in an investment banker’s Boca Raton home, members of the audience had each ponied up $50,000 to be there, Romney believed he had a private moment and his tone and message, one may be left with the impression we finally got to see the real Romney. The Tax Policy Center, Ezra Klein, the Economix Blog – actually every credible policy source – have exposed the intellectual dishonesty displayed by Romney and others who use the number of Americans who pay no federal income tax out of context and as a wedge to divide us. What’s astonishing is that the GOP has moved so far to the right, the party (and standard bearer Romney) is abandoning decades of its own policy toward taxes and the working poor. Romney is accelerating the Republican Party’s shift away from ‘compassionate conservatism,’ the very concept that helps them appeal to the middle. The New York Times had an interesting story today that illustrates this. As the Times adds to the body of work out there taking down Romney’s comments about the 47%, the paper provides a bit of history we should all note:

For a long time, cutting taxes for the poor was a major emphasis of the Republican Party. One reason that many poor people no longer pay federal income taxes is that they qualify for credits such as the earned-income tax credit, which has its roots in conservative thinking and has long been supported by members of both parties as a way to help the poor without increasing welfare payments or raising the minimum wage. The credit was added to the tax code when Gerald Ford was president, and was expanded by Republicans and Democrats, including President Ronald Reagan, who called it “one of the best anti-poverty programs this country has ever seen” in 1986. President George W. Bush, for his part, doubled the child tax credit, and his tax cuts erased the federal income tax liability for millions of households.

What we know about the numbers is that nearly a third of those who owe no federal income tax get to that state of affairs because they benefit from deductions like the earned income tax credit (EITC), child care tax credits and standard deductions for children. The EITC was created by Republicans. The child tax credit was doubled by the GOP. These policies were/are the proverbial “hand up” conservatives chat about at cocktail parties and on TV. What’s more, in a nation with a tax code that is a monstrosity of complexity built to benefit corporate interests and the wealthy, deductions like the EITC and the child care credit are small beer compared to corporate loopholes and carried interest. They are also good policy. They keep people working and for many they are a path to upward mobility. It’s not just that Romney says his job isn’t to be concerned with the likes of the working poor. He and Paul Ryan also have plans to scale back the EITC in order to help pay for their budget and tax plan that cuts taxes on the wealthy and would lead to tax increases for the middle class. We outlined in our recent report how it would work in Ohio. President Barack Obama’s Recovery Act contained enhancements to the EITC and the child tax credit. In Ohio, there are 1.6 million families that qualify for the EITC and the expanded refundable portion of the child tax credit. Under Romney-Ryan, we estimate that 500,000 of those families would see their taxes go up $876 per year due to the Republican candidates’ plan to rollback Obama’s improvements. Romney also proposes to cut by 58% the child care tax credit that allows many working families to afford to keep working. 158,000 families in Ohio alone use this credit. With the Romney cut, they would pay $318 more per year per child. Romney’s pronouncements on the relative worth of half of the U.S. aren’t just the talk of a guy who’s never been in touch, they are another sign of the hard right shift of his party. And, if you’ve been thinking that Romney is just pandering to keep his right-wing base in line – read our latest report. He intends to walk the walk.

Sep 17 2012

What does GOP stand to gain by suppressing the vote in Ohio?

There’s been plenty of coverage of the complete mess Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted has made of the Ohio election process this year. Directives, court orders countermanding directives, partisanship on the ballot board – it goes on and on. Husted seemed to be his own man for his first year or so in office. From time to time he went his own way from Gov. John Kasich and the right-wing Caveman Caucus in the Ohio General Assembly. The closer we get to Election Day 2012, though, the more Husted has become Ohio’s handmaiden for the national right wing and their concerted effort to suppress the vote in several battleground states. Why mess with an early voting system that worked? A recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal-Marist Poll gives us some evidence as to why Husted and other Republicans are fighting so hard to limit early voting in Ohio. The poll shows that nearly a quarter (24%) of Ohio’s likely voters plan to vote early. Another 17% haven’t decided. OK, lots of people want to vote early. One of my colleagues here at IO dug into the polling data and produced the two charts at the end of this post. As you can see,of those voters planning to cast ballots early, President Barack Obama leads challenger Mitt Romney by 23%. In the second chart you can see that of those voters who plan to vote on Election Day, Romney enjoys a 4% lead. When Republicans work to make it harder for people to vote – in a day and age when we have the technology and resources to manage early voting – there’s a payoff – for them.

Sep 14 2012

Seniors in Ohio would pay more – a lot more – for health care if Romney elected

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said over and over that Ohio’s current seniors won’t pay more for Medicare under the Romney-Ryan plan. That’s just plain false. In a report we issued this week, The Real Cost of the Romney-Ryan Plan to Ohioans, we explain the reality for today’s retirees and tomorrow’s seniors. Our research partner for the report was the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

How Romney Costs Today’s Seniors More for Medicare

Under Romney-Ryan, today’s seniors would pay more for Medicare out of pocket in higher premiums and increased cost for prescription drugs. This is tied to two huge policy changes:

Repeal of the Affordable Care Act.
Converting the current federal-state joint Medicaid program into a state-administered block grant program at a reduced rate of funding.

[Read more…]

Sep 13 2012

Ohio’s Early Voting Timeline – Access Moving in the Wrong Direction Under Husted

Ohio voters have won a key victory in the battle to restore certain early voting opportunities in Ohio. On Wednesday, a federal judge denied Secretary of State Jon Husted’s request for a stay of the Judge’s order to allow counties to set voting times for the final three days before the election. This paves the way for counties to open up the door on Saturday through Monday, November 3-5. In-person voting on the final weekend of the election has proven a very popular option for Ohio voters. In fact, according to Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates, in 2008, 102,243 Ohioans voted in-person on the final three days before the election. Yesterday’s announcement is a significant step in the right direction. [Read more…]

Sep 13 2012

The Job Killing Effect in the Romney-Ryan Plan

If you’ve been following the blog over the past couple of days, you know we – along with the Center for American Progress Action Fund – released a report yesterday on how the Romney-Ryan economic plan would clobber Ohioans. Yesterday we talked about a few kitchen table issues and we took a look at Sheldon Adelson’s seat at the king’s table where Romney’s tax policies are concerned. Today we’re talking about jobs. Unfortunately, there’s not anything concrete in Mitt Romney’s tax plans that would increase hiring in Ohio. In fact, there’s one huge policy that would inevitably encourage more jobs to move overseas. In the short video below, Tom Perriello, president of CAP-Action, explains how Romney wants to “repatriate” hundreds of billions of dollars U.S. investors and corporations are holding offshore. This money is profits from overseas. If they bring that money back here to the U.S., they would have to pay taxes. Romney wants to give them a tax-free holiday and then make it permanent. That would mean U.S. corporations and investors could operate overseas tax free here in the U.S. They could bring their cash back while they ship more jobs to places like India and China. When was the last time you got a tax holiday?

Sep 12 2012