The Howard Dean Economic Record

“I think most of the [P]resident’s tax cut ought to be repealed. It’s very bad economic policy.”
— Howard Dean (NBC’s “Meet The Press,” July 21, 2002)

Despite his liberal stances on many social issues, Dean claims to be the most fiscally conservative governor Vermont has had in the last 40 years. This may have been true at the beginning of his career as governor, when the Cato Institute gave him B’s in 1994 and 1996 for his fiscal policy. However, his grades slipped to C’s in 1998 and 2000, and in 2002 Cato gave him a D.

Furthermore, his claims to be a fiscal conservative are dubious given his propensity to propose big government programs like universal health care, the centerpiece of his current campaign. Furthermore, Dean has said that he would repeal most of the recent tax cuts in order to fund this plan as well as other big government programs like more money for a failing public education monopoly.

He is also opposed to most options for fundamentally reforming the tax code, especially a national sales tax.

As governor for 11 years, Dean only cut taxes once and refused to cut them even when the state had a large surplus. In 2002, Dean said he would even repeal the tax cuts for middle class and working class people based on the fact that “[no one] that I know noticed they got a tax cut” (CNN’s “Capitol Gang,” Oct 5). One of his biggest claims to fame is that he left Vermont with a balanced budget. Yet, in order to achieve this so-called balance, he raided other government trust funds (think Social Security on the federal level), forced local government to raise property taxes, and reduced payments to doctors, hospitals, and other caregivers to make up for Medicaid shortfalls, effectively increasing costs for those not eligible for the program.

Despite these tactics, the incoming governor, Jim Douglas, says that the state actually has a deficit of between $30 and $40 million. Furthermore, the budget Dean released contains no new spending increases even though state employees are due pre-negotiated pay raises. In order to correct for these problems, Governor Douglas has said that the state can expect program elimination and layoffs to hold down government spending.