Culver/Judge campaign: Statement on Branstad's "facts"
Posted on Monday, June 21 at 8:50am
DES MOINES - Culver/Judge Communications Director Ali Glisson responded when the Branstad campaign finally tried to release the "facts" behind their latest ad.
"The Branstad campaign finally took the time to try to back-up their ridiculous claims on the Culver/Judge record. It is an effort littered with fuzzy math and confusion about how a budget works.
"The chart is phony because David Vaudt is not counting all of the sources of revenue in his politically motivated predictions about the budget. Is Branstad saying that we should not have used money like the federal stimulus funds and state reserves; money specially designed to help states through tough times? Did he want to layoff more teachers? Does he really oppose the bipartisan action taken in 2009 to spend reserve funds for flood relief?
"The truth is that the budget has been balanced every day Chet Culver has been in office, as is required by the Iowa Constitution. So, my question for Terry Branstad supporter David Vaudt, are you keeping two sets of books? Vaudt knows these budgets have been balanced and constitutional, which is why he feels the need to manipulate the revenue numbers like this. He conveniently ignores the fact that Terry Branstad ran up actual deficits for more than a decade.
"Perhaps the Branstad campaign should also look up the definition of state budget deficit since they clearly do not understand it. Again, Branstad cannot ignore his own record of running up deficits for more than a decade while hiding the truth about the state budget from Iowans by keeping to two sets of books.
"Vaudt made the $1 billion budget deficit projection before the budget was completed. The completed budget signed by Governor Chet Culver has no budget deficit, just like the three budgets signed by Chet Culver in previous years.
"The Governor and the Legislature required school districts to spend down reserves before raising property taxes. They were then able to significantly backfill earlier cuts to education in order to reduce teacher layoffs and help property tax payers. The prediction referred to by the Branstad campaign was made before Governor Culver and the Legislature took final action on those steps.
"The record is clear. The Culver budgets have been balanced every day he has been in office. Branstad ran unconstitutional deficits for more than a decade and recently admitted that the books were not balanced when he was governor."
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