Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley found himself defending a recently approved tax hike for high-earners after the {Wall Street Journal} blasted him in an editorial.
O’Malley’s tax plan increased the tax burden on people, who earn over $100,000 and households that earn over $150,000 by about $250 per year. O’Malley has continuously said it was done to balance the budget, but others say it’s unnecessary.
In the May 23 edition of the {Journal}, an editorial took aim at O’Malley’s policies. It criticized O’Malley for what it called “progressive taxation.”
“A family of four earning $250,000 a year will be able to save money by moving to Washington, D.C., arguably the most liberal city in America,” an editorial in the {Journal} read. “The same family can save $6,000 a year by relocating across the Potomac River to Virginia, where the top tax rate is 5.75%, according to the Tax Foundation.”
The editorial in the {Journal} suggested that instead of raising taxes O’Malley and Maryland should curtail spending.
“The alternative would be to reduce state spending to match current revenues, especially in a state where spending has grown to $35 billion from $28 billion since 2007,” the editorial said. “But most Democrats and their union allies denounced an alternative plan to avoid the tax hike and allow spending to grow by $700 million, or 2%, as a ‘doomsday budget.’”
O’Malley, who is perhaps considering a run for president in 2016, immediately jumped on the defensive to defend his policies. He wrote a letter to the editor of the {Wall Street Journal} displaying why he believes his policies are working.
“We are all entitled to our own opinions; we are not entitled to our own facts,” O’Malley wrote. “The Editorial Page of the {Wall Street Journal} falsely claimed Maryland’s tax policies have driven countless millionaires out of our state. In fact, the number of millionaire households in Maryland has actually increased by 19% since our Administration took office.”
O’Malley claims that Maryland is taking a balanced approach to solving fiduciary issues. He says there’s a distinct difference between state governments that take that approach and governments who continue to follow the policies of former President George W. Bush.
“Because we’ve opted in Maryland for a balanced approach, on a percentage basis, we’ve been able to recover nearly twice the jobs lost during the Bush recession as has the country as a whole,” O’Malley said. “This year, Maryland’s businesses achieved their best quarter of new job creation since 1999, creating jobs at three times the rate of their counterparts in Virginia, and more than one and a half times the national rate.”
While O’Malley may be right in saying the state has recovered jobs, the Bureau of Labor and Statistics shows that Maryland still has a long way to go before its back to where it was before the recession hit.
Maryland’s 6.7 percent April unemployment rate is marginally higher than the 6.2 percent in Jan. 2009, when President Obama took office and the country was in the midst of a recession, and significantly higher than the 3.8 percent in Jan. 2007, when O’Malley took office.
