FACT CHECK: REPUBLICAN LEGISLATORS ON IOWA PRESS ARE WRONG ON THE FACTS
Republican legislative leaders Paul McKinley and Kraig Paulsen appeared on this past weekend’s Iowa Press where they grossly distorted the Culver record. Iowans know better than to listen to McKinley and Paulsen until they can get their facts straight.McKinley: It's popular now just to look at the credits. Let's look at everything such as the I-jobs program, a $900 million borrowing scheme, is that creating jobs? We need to look at everything.
FACT: Governor Culver signed into law the $830 million dollar I-JOBS program ($1.19 billion with interest) to invest in Iowa’s economy and create jobs. I-JOBS was funded entirely by existing gaming revenue and is being implemented without a tax increase. It is not a ‘borrowing scheme.’
Paulsen: Look, I think one of the things that is important to understand about that report is that the governor as put it out there, he said $128 million difference and that may very well be true from the government's perspective. That's not how republicans do the analysis. We're going to do the analysis from the taxpayers' perspective, and there's not $128 million savings to the taxpayers because manufacture those things are just accelerating tax collections and in some cases creating new ones.
FACT: The state of Iowa must enforce its tax laws and collect the money from taxes and fees that it is owed. Iowans expect everyone to pay their fair share, and the state government is working to improve that process.
According to the Iowa Efficiency Report, Iowans owe $453.7 million in taxes to the state government. By reorganizing and restructuring debt collection efforts, the state of Iowa expects to save over $110 million over the next 5 years. No new taxes are proposed in the report.
Paulsen: Look, he came in and promised he was going to do a host of different things. He keeps saying he's going to pass a balanced budget without raising taxes and he hastily raised taxes. I think those things give him significant problems.
FACT: Governor Culver has balanced the budget every year he has been governor. And, he has successfully balanced every budget without raising taxes. Governor Culver does not believe in raising taxes on Iowans during the worst recession in our nation since the Great Depression. The Culver/ Judge Administration has made the tough choices to cut spending in order to balance the budget and are working to move Iowa forward.