New Hampshire may not garner the attention of Wisconsin or Ohio, but it is doing just as much to create strong conservative policies, says the state’s GOP House Speaker William O’Brien.
“What we’re doing is transformative,” he told
Politico.
The rightward path started with the 2010 elections that gave Republicans control of the state House and Senate. Since then the legislature has helped put into law a balanced budget that doesn’t raise taxes or fees, a 17.6 percent decrease in state-funded spending, a reduction in cigarette taxes, and a plan to return about $666,000 in funds from the healthcare reform law to the federal government.
Lawmakers also approved Medicare malpractice reform and an anti-welfare fraud package that now await action from Democratic Gov. John Lynch. He vetoed a right-to-work bill passed by the legislature.
Unlike Ohio with GOP Gov. John Kasich and Wisconsin with GOP Gov. Scott Walker, New Hampshire is making conservative headway without a Republican in the governor’s chair, O’Brien points out. If it did have a GOP governor, “and we were doing this, we’d have a popular governor with a nationwide profile,” he said. “How many states have taken state-funded spending and reduced it 17.6 percent?”
O’Brien lit into Lynch for failing to cooperate with Republican lawmakers. “This is the way he’s always been . . . I think what he’d rather do is function as a symbolic head of state than a head of government.”
On the positive side, O’Brien said he is proud of what he does for an annual salary of $125.
“I know it sounds sort of contrived. But I think I’m doing something for the community. I’m not doing this as a career. Actually it’s better if it’s not a career.”
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