Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter and writes from Ohio University.
Republican nominee Vivek Ramaswamy has a powerful ally in his quest to become Ohio’s next governor: amnesia.
The Cincinnati native and tech billionaire put two Statehouse building blocks in his rangefinder and fired away: the state income-tax, and the federal-state Medicaid health-care program for low-income Ohioans.
And Ramaswamy also stepped on toes. In a rather startling departure from political tradition, he implied criticism of lame-duck Republican Gov. Mike DeWine for DeWine’s stewardship of Medicaid.
Somone might care to remind Ramaswamy of what Ronald Reagan (borrowing from California’s GOP state chair) said was the Republican Party’s 11th Commandment: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.”
Ramaswamy was valedictorian of his graduating class at Cincinnati’s Jesuit-run St. Xavier High School. You have to wonder how he managed to do that despite an apparent shortfall in learning historical facts, because, to borrow a celebrated lyric from Sam Cooke’s “Wonderful World,” Ramaswamy doesn’t seem to know much about history – in this case, Republican Party history and Ohio legislative history.
Coincidentally or not, a couple of those gee-I-forgot moments mask his fellow Republicans’ track record, both on the state income tax, and on Medicaid, which today pays doctor bills and the like for roughly 25% of Ohio’s residents. Yes, statistically speaking, every fourth Ohioan you see at the mall or at your son’s or daughter’s athletic event is a Medicaid patient.
When, prithee, did Democrats drag Ohio, kicking and screaming, into participation in Medicaid, whose funding comes from the U.S. Treasury as well as Ohio’s? Democrats didn’t. Republicans did – in 1965 – and there was no kicking and screaming, just another day at Ye Old Statehouse Law Factory.
In 1965, the GOP-run Ohio House authorized Ohio’s participation in Medicaid with a landslide 122-3 vote. (The House then had more members than today’s 99) and the state Senate, also GOP-run, followed suit.
Republican Gov. James A. Rhodes signed the bill. And the sponsor of that 1965 Ohio Medicaid law was the late Rep. Kenneth B. Creasy, a Delaware Republican. That’s the Delaware County that was one of just five Ohio counties that had backed GOP conservative Barry Goldwater for president in 1964.
Then there’s Ohio’s state income tax, which Republicans have shrieked about – ever since some of them voted to pass it in 1971.
True, not all of them – but enough Republicans in a General Assembly then Republican-run to enact the income tax, a key goal of Democratic then-Gov. John J. Gilligan .
Late in 1971, an Ohio House run 53-45 (there was one vacancy) approved a state income tax, Ohio’s first, in a 56-42 vote. Among those voting “yes” on the income tax: then-House Speaker Charles F. Kurfess of Bowling Green and future House Republican Leader Corwin M. Nixon of Lebanon.
When former Republican Gov. James A. Rhodes made a comeback in 1974, narrowly unseating Giligan, though there were the occasional jabs at the state income tax, Rhodes never moved to repeal it, taking advantage of the revenue it produced while letting Democrats take the blame for it.
Only in 1985, after the party captured control of the state Senate under the late Paul E. Gillmor of Port Clinton did Statehouse Republicans marry themselves to tax cuts as a campaign theme.
Steep income-tax increases engineered in 1983 by General Assembly Democrats and the administration of Democratic Gov. Richard F. Celeste provoked public ire – though the tax increases were made necessary by Ronald Reagan’s Voodoo Economics and by Rhodes’ refusal to stop slapping Band-Aids on a hemorrhaging budget.
If 40 years of state income-tax cuts were the answer to Ohioans’ prayers, you’d think it’d be raining milk and honey on Ohioans’ lawns and pastures. But it’s not. Because here’s the stark fact Ramaswamy and the Democratic candidate for governor, Dr. Amy Acton, need to confront: How is it that 1969 – that is, 57 years ago – was the last time per capita personal income in Ohio matched national per capita personal income?
That’s the real problem facing Ohio, and further tinkering with Ohio’s state income tax, or kicking Ohioans off Medicaid, aren’t solutions.
They’re just talking points.
And three generations of talking points – rather than concrete solutions – is what got Ohio to where it is today.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter and writes from Ohio University.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ramaswamy has broken Reagan’s 11th Commandment when it comes to DeWine | Opinion
Reporting by Thomas Suddes, Columnist / The Columbus Dispatch
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