Representative Chris Rants (R-Sioux City), one of the seven GOP gubernatorial candidates, emailed me about the post I wrote regarding yesterday’s meeting with former Governor Terry Branstad. He asked, “did Branstad say the spending reforms were his idea?” Which upon listening to the audio of the meeting again; he did take credit for forming a committee for state spending reforms.
He encouraged me to take a look at an attachment he sent. A couple of gleanings:
“The record refutes Branstad’s claim that he was the leader in the movement to clean up state budgeting that has resulted in a deficit of more than $200 million when calculated by standard accounting.”
“Branstad never asked lawmakers to enact what many at the statehouse believe someday may be recognized as the most significant budget reforms approved to date…”
Did he really demonstrate leadership in fiscal matters? It also doesn’t look good when even Democrats (hypocritically so) critiques your record on taxes, of course in his defense he had a Democrat majority in the Iowa Legislature to deal with.