Spot the liar

Washington Post March 28, 2005:

Schwarzenegger disagrees. "No one has ever raised taxes and solved the problem, nor will we solve the problem," he said. "We don't have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem."

Washington Post March 27, 2005:

In the past two years, Republican governors including Nevada's Kenny Guinn, Idaho's Dirk Kempthorne, Georgia's Sonny Perdue and Ohio's Bob Taft have dumped no-new-taxes pledges to push for major new revenue and increased state spending.

Perhaps the most stinging reversal for tax-limitation groups in Washington was the quick conversion of Mitchell E. Daniels Jr. (R), who was President Bush's first budget director and an outspoken advocate of lower taxes -- until he was elected governor of Indiana last November. In his first state budget, Daniels recently proposed a 29 percent increase in the income tax, targeted at the upper brackets. Daniels cited a $250 million revenue shortfall and said spending cuts of that size were untenable.

All of these tax-raising Republicans offer the same basic reasons for their change of heart. "I have done something that is absolutely not part of my fiber," Kempthorne said when he proposed Idaho tax increases in 2003. "But I'm not going to dismantle this state, and I'm not going to jeopardize our bond rating, and I'm not going to reduce my emphasis on education."

Sometimes one should put his own politics aside for the good of his constituents. Arnold has yet to learn that lesson.