Bill cunning in the Great American of course. Yes, yes, last night
you had a great victory for the Trumpster from New Hampshire. Now it's onto
that South Carolina primary, which is going to I'm sure win by thirty points
over Haley. But nonetheless, in the state of Ohio, there's about nine,
maybe seven or eight other states that have no state income tax, and
states that don't have a state income tax, like Tennessee, Texas and Nevada
and Florida tend to do very well economically and they rely upon the sales tax
in order to generate a whole bunch of their state to income to run state
government. Representative Adam Matthews of Warren County as a proposal to eliminate the state
income tax in the state of Ohio. Representative Adam Matthews, welcome again to
the Bill Cunningham Show. And can you explain to the American people, Representative
why this is a good idea? How much will it save the average American
family? When will it happen? So let's talk about state income tax.
Why do you want to eliminate it? Ohio has been cutting income taxes for
decades now. The income tax was first implemented in Ohio in nineteen seventy one,
and every single time that we've had a census after that, we have
lost relative representation in Congress. We've lost population compared to other states. And
as you mentioned, states like Tennessee, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, they're
doing a lot better than us by having a better tax system. And I
was able to run House Bill one, which provided the foundation for the two
point two billion dollar income tax cut that we had in this last budget and
got us almost to a flat tax rate. And now we have the end
in sight, working with other local senators like Senator George Lang and Senator Huffman
and Rep. Lampton to by twenty thirty get to zero percent income tax and
join those other states so that Ohio can reclaim its role as the economic engine
of the Midwest. Now, Adam, how much money just in rough dollars,
I won't hold you to a specific number. How much money does the
state income tax generate? Every year? About how much? Looks the modeling
that we're having, we're thinking about eight billion dollars. How do you substitute
where do you get that eight billion dollars from? Then, assuming get rid
of that income tax. Where does the eight billion come from every year?
Part of it is going to have to be right. Sizing government. Our
budgets in the twenty teams, we're in the sixty billion dollar range. Just
last budget in twenty twenty was eighty billion dollars. In this budget was eighty
six billion dollars. So we continue to have an increase of spending. And
if we just hold steady, you look at sales tax revenue, not even
increasing the sales tax rate over the last six years from twenty seventeen until twenty
thirteen, get an increased revenue of three billion dollars. So just holding study
allowing the economic growth that we're seeing to keep pace well, not growing government.
It's just a lot of the way there. At the same time,
Ohio is sitting on the Utica shale, on natural gas, so that we
can follow the model put forward by Texas, Oklahoma, South Dakota of unleashing
the energy that's right beneath our feet, so that we can have that type
of prosperity that Ohioans have come to expect. And I'm told that the reserves
of the shale deposits would provide eighty to one hundred more years. It isn't
as if, okay, we only have the shale for the next couple of
years. We're talking eighty to one hundred years, and by that point they're
going to find delithium crystal somewhere in Star Trek, and somehow we're going to
have the lithium crystals or cold nuclear fusion. But to get to that point,
we've got to exploit the natural resources under our feet given to us by
God. Do you have wide support for this from other reps and senators and
from Governor Mike DeWine. Do they look at you, Askance Adam Matthews,
so, do they nod their head that you're onto something. Of course,
there's going to be some politicians that want to continue to spend our hardwar and
tax dollars. But since we had our press release yesterday in Columbus at ten
in the morning, and then came back home to southwest Ohio and had a
town hall, and since in Mason, my phone has been blown up with
other representatives, other senators around the state, some statewides that are very excited
about moving to this next chapter, getting to the end point of having zero
percent income tax and providing making sure that all of us, our families,
our businesses can better balance our budgets, especially in this time of inflation.
As far as as far as economic activity. The states you mentioned Tennessee,
Florida, Oklahoma not so much but are kind of like warm weather ports.
Oklahoma certainly can be, but basically it's a Midwest state. Do you anticipate
there'll be more Americans staying and moving into Ohio without a state income tax?
Absolutely, and one of those. South Dakota is definitely. South Dakota is
not a warm weather state and has been doing much better by becoming more business
friendly and looking at controls. You have just neighboring to us, We have
Indiana, who has ranked much more business friendly on a tax system on how
complex your taxes are, and they have about the same weather we do.
If you want to know what a weather in Ohio it's going to be,
look at Indiana an hour an hour ago, and they're doing better. You
look in a similar way Arizona, New Mexico have very similar weather. Arizona
has been cutting their taxes, making sure governments the right size. New Mexico
hasn't, and we see that zone is growing much better than New Mexico is
so we know that there's whether it's King's Island, whether it's the western southern
Cincinnati Open, whether it's the families that we've grown here. People want to
live in Ohio and we have to stop taxing them and encouraging them to leave.
My email inbox at the State House has been receiving multiple emails from people
that have moved to Georgia to Florida and saying, you can cut these taxes.
I'd love to come back and be with my grandkids. To be able
to be here, I'd love to move my business back and hire more good
Ohioans here, and that's what we're moving towards. So the plan is by
twenty thirty. I think Kentucky had a similar but then the revenues of the
state were not as great as they could be. If we had a president
in Washington who wanted to exploit the natural resources that are available in shale and
throughout Ohio, we'd be in much better shape. But at this point,
we'll see what happens in November now. Secondly, about marijuana, there are
some in the House catching flak for not going along with the Senate when it
comes to using the present medical marijuana system to sell adult recreational use. What
is your position if any unrecreational pot and why has it taken so long to
implement the will of the people. So we had the vote of issue too.
I think there's a lot of things that still need to be dealt with.
One of the things the vote wanted home grow. However, the way
that it was written said that you can parcel out pieces of property. If
you have a one acre lot, you could parcel it out to one hundred
little pieces and get ninety nine friends to say that you're growing their marijuana.
And now you have six hundred plants on your one piece of property. That
doesn't sound like personal homegrowth to me. And so we're going to that sounds
like industrialization, and we're going to have really good discussions on how do we
listen to the will of the people, but do it in a way that
has the type of safeguards that our families expect of us. Because what we
got from the voters was a right line of yes or no, and we
got to make sure that we take the responsibility well to make sure that there
aren't unintended consequences down the road. Adam Matthews, what's the timeline on this
thing? Here we are at the end of January, and to anticipate what
month will this be implemented because many are waiting to do what has to be
done. I know Bill Sites had them on repeatedly, and the way the
way the statutory framework worked on state issue too, that someone in their home
could grow enough pot to supply about thirty five thousand joints. And I don't
think the intent was to let somebody have thirty five thousand joints. I'm not
sure that's for personal use in one year. I tend to think they'll be
giving out to other people or profiting from that. Can you give the American
people some idea the month when there's going to be the proper regulations and law
and effect and we can move forward on this thing. I would love to
get back to work. I'm both in Columbus and then doing my day job
as an intellectual property attorney. Every day when we have session, when the
Senate comes and gets things done, we're ready to go. So you anticipate.
And lastly, the Senate's putting together their veto of the Governor's transgender rights
building Ohio would be the second state in the Union to do this. Kind
of tell us your vote on that issue and why it turned out the right
way from your perspective. I was a co sponsor of the safe sect which
prevents minors from going under hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and really mutilation of
their bodies. And for the same reason that we don't allow miners to get
tattoos, we don't allow miners to get breast modifications in plastic surgery. We
were able to pass this with a veto proofs majority. The governor came through
and vetoed it as well, and I am so grateful that the House could
lead the way in overriding his veto. We need to stand with families against
this type of medical adventurism and protect people that are in difficult situations. We
know these children are going through hard times, but what we need to do
is to be able to walk with them in a similar way that when we
had the antirexia crisis of the nineteen nineties and early two thousands, we did
not then say, yes, you have a weight problem. We said,
how do we get you to confront the reality? How do we love you
in a good way instead of prescribing them appetite suppressants and liposuction. And I
am really excited for the Senate to join us and follow our lead in overriding
the government's detail. All right, we got to run Representative Adam Matthews of
Warren County area. Thanks for coming on. We'd lawyers that must stick together.
As far as the state and income tax. Are you optimistic this is
going to pass or not? I am incredibly optimistic. We have a powerhouse
team with Senator Huffman Center laying and Ret Lambton of putting this in the framework
to get rid of the income tax by twenty thirty good and that will encourage
more people to stay in Ohio and more people to move into Ohio. And
you're confident that you can substitute the eight billion dollars a year through other means
and methods, and we'll see what happens. But when you gave me those
numbers about the growth of Ohio state government under Republicans, is that mainly driven
by medicaid by large numbers of individuals living here that didn't pay in the system.
What is the main driver? Every year it goes up as seemingly five
to ten percent, and you can't stop it from going up. What's the
driver of that budget? We are able to find a way to balance our
budget without even looking at medicaid. If we're doing medicaid cuts because of the
federal match, every cut that we do from the state budget, it's only
thirty three cents to try to offset the income tax. So our way to
balance the income text doesn't mess with medicaid, doesn't mess with K twelve,
but does on that type of other types of discretionary spending that the state continues
to use, whether that is leasing buildings in Columbus for our departments when we
have empty office space up here, or allowing sales tax exemptions on publishers for
using sweepstakes rules. Those things we need to always have a fine tooth come
when we're looking through the budget because we are stewards of taxpayer dollars. But
now when we have a goal of getting rid of the income tax in twenty
thirty, instead of it being a nice to have, we can be mission
focused on eliminating wasteful spending. You know, I saw on squat box this
morning that New York City has one hundred million square feet of empty office space
one hundred million square feet. I'm sure Columbus Cincinnati has lots of empty office
space. The world is changing and so many people must be incentivized to locate
into Ohio stay in Ohio. And for high income Americans to not devastate income
tax would be a big deal. So many of us would encourage you on
this route. Representative Adam Matthews of Warren County, once again, thank you
for coming on the Bill Cunningham Show. Good luck in godspeed, and thank
you Representative Adam Matthews, thank you, thank you, God blessed. All
right, let's continue with more thank you coming up later, we'll be with
scheduled Kevin Jackson of the Black Sphere to talk about the urban areas. He
has a great posting on that topic of about how Democrats, especially black male
Democrats, are going to vote for Donald Trump this time because the Democratic Party
has failed them miserably and so much more. Plus Pitchers and Catchers report in
about three weeks all A News Radio seven hundred WLW. Meanwhile, in the
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