Perry seeks Missouri businesses

AP/Kansas City Star:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry warned Thursday that unless Missouri lawmakers override Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto of an income tax cut, he won’t be the only governor trying to lure business away from Missouri.

Perry, a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, had the final word as two governors made appearances in the St. Louis area Thursday in which they offered widely different views of Missouri’s income tax cut plan.

Nixon spoke at the Delta Gamma Center for Children with Visual Impairments in Richmond Heights, calling House Bill 253 a “reckless experiment” that would cause deep cuts in services for children with disabilities and threaten economic progress in the Show-Me State.

Meanwhile, Perry spoke at a private gathering in Clayton hosted by the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, appeared on KMOX Radio and spoke at an evening rally in an event tent on the parking lot of a Chesterfield hotel.

At the rally, Perry made no apologies for a series of ads airing in Missouri that criticize Nixon’s veto and tout Texas as a good place to do business. He said he isn’t offended when Bobby Jindal, the Republican governor from neighboring Louisiana, tries to poach business from Texas.

“By competing against each other we make each other stronger,” Perry said.

Perry said Missouri lawmakers need to realize that Kansas and other states that neighbor the Show-Me State are watching to see how they react to Nixon’s veto.

“If they see the continual taxation burden in Missouri, it’s not just going to be Rick Perry showing up in Missouri knocking on the doors of all the businesses,” Perry said.

At the center of everything is Nixon’s veto of the bill that would gradually reduce Missouri’s corporate income tax rate to nearly half its current level and lower the top tax rate for individuals from 6 percent to 5.5 percent over the next decade, so long as state revenues continue to rise by at least $100 million annually. It also would phase in a 50 percent tax deduction for business income reported on individual tax returns.
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Nixon seems clearly offended by the competition and the reaction to his veto.  He is sounding like a wounded liberal trying to defend this tax and spend policies by playing to the empathy for kids with disabilities.  He seems to be a man with too many priorities and too little empathy for tax payers.