COLUMBUS – Members of the Ohio House and Senate are scheduled to meet Monday to begin hammering out the differences between two versions of the state’s next two-year operating budget, which must be approved and signed by Gov. John Kasich by Friday.
Minority Democrats were quick to offer up their criticism of the two plans, saying that they fail to address the problem created by Ohio’s economic realities, which the Democrats call “dismal,” and merely seek to continue practicing policies that haven’t worked.
“The Ohio GOP’s misguided tax policy has not created the economic stability, better-paying jobs or real growth that was promised. While the rest of the nation is recovering from the Great Recession, Ohio has been held back,” said House Democratic Leader Fred Strahorn (D-Dayton).
Strahorn and his fellow Democrats and their allies argue that Ohio’s job growth has trailed the national average for 54 consecutive months, the average household earns less than those in the rest of the nation and that 30 percent of Ohio’s jobs pay “less than poverty wages.”
“For decades, Republicans have been cutting taxes, mostly for millionaires, and they’ve been promising that these tax cuts would lead to a robust economy. That hasn’t happened,” said Sandy Theis, spokeswoman for the liberal policy group ProgressOhio.
Both versions of the budget plan claim to have closed $1 billion projected shortfall, but the Democrats maintain that they have preserved a tax loophole that allows small business owners to exempt as much as $250,000 of their income from taxation, which Theis and others say helped create that revenue shortfall in the first place.
According to a report in The Columbus Dispatch, the small business deduction costs the state as much as $1.1 billion a year while benefitting a small number wealthy taxpayers.
By halting or rolling back Medicaid expansion, Theis says the Republican versions of the budget fail to support what she says is one of the strongest sectors of job growth in the state: health care.
The Senate’s version calls for freezing Medicaid expansion starting in July 2018, while advocates of the federally-funded program argue that it has made health care coverage available to hundreds of thousands of Ohioans and eliminating it would cause job losses in hospitals and among other health care providers.
The conference committee is expected to present a final report on the budget for consideration by the full General Assembly next week
The Republican-controlled legislature and Gov. Kasich must approve a balanced budget by June 30 to avoid government shutdown.