“The People of Maryland Are Not Going to Stand For That”: Governor Hogan on the Proposed Largest Tax Increase In State History

It Is A Tax on Working Families. It Is A Tax On Single Moms. … On Daycare, On Barbers, On Dog Walkers, On Landscapers.”

ANNAPOLIS, MD—At a press conference today, Governor Hogan addressed a proposal by legislative leaders and committee chairs to impose the largest tax increase in state history, saying, “It’s not ever going to happen while I’m governor, I can promise you.” Here are excerpts from his comments:

“I’ve been saying for at least six months, almost every day, that the legislature was going to propose billions of dollars in new taxes to pay for this Kirwan program. And they all continued to say ‘no, we are not going to propose billions in new taxes.’ I specifically said they were going to raise the sales tax, and they swore that they would not raise the sales tax. …

“It is a tax on working families. It’s a tax on single moms. It’s going to be 1700-and-some dollars per household on every service that they utilize. On daycare, on barbers, on dog walkers, on landscaping, on somebody that cuts your grass. This is the largest tax increase ever in the history of the state. …

“Some of you may know, I was elected governor because of massive tax increases. The previous governor, Martin O’Malley, had raised taxes 43 times in a row; he raised the sales tax by $600 million a year. This is more than four times higher than that. When he did that, he became the 50th least popular governor in America. …

“They are pushing the largest tax increase in history. The 43 taxes in a row that O’Malley did, totaled over five years: $10 billion. It crushed our economy. Our overall economic performance was 49th out of 50 states. We lost 8,000 businesses and 100,000 jobs. We’ve tried to turn all that around. We eliminated the $5 billion deficit, we haven’t had a single tax increase in five years, we now have more businesses and more jobs ever in the history of the entire state, cut our unemployment rate 3.5%. This would destroy everything we’ve done for five years. It would destroy our economy. And this one tax increase is higher than all 43 of the O’Malley tax increases added together over five years. It’s not ever going to happen while I’m governor. I can promise you