"What Arizona really needs right now is firm leadership in the mold of Margaret Thatcher," said AFP Arizona director Tom Jenney. "That is not what Gov. Brewer gave us yesterday."

The Arizona chapter of Americans for Prosperity (AFP Arizona) today criticized Gov. Jan Brewer's proposal to raise state taxes by a billion dollars, saying that a recession is the worst time to take more money away from struggling families and businesses.

"What Arizona really needs right now is firm leadership in the mold of Margaret Thatcher," said AFP Arizona director Tom Jenney. "That is not what Gov. Brewer gave us yesterday."

In response to Brewer's invocation of Ronald Reagan's 1967 decision to raise taxes, when he was governor of California, Jenney responded, "Reagan didn't raise taxes during a recession. Herbert Hoover did that. So did George H.W. Bush."

In her speech yesterday before a special joint session of the Legislature, Brewer proposed that the Legislature send two referenda to voters in a special election. One would be the billion-dollar tax increase. The other, which AFP Arizona supports, would allow the Legislature to make reductions to voter-mandated spending programs.

Because of single-subject rules, the two proposals would have to go to the ballot separately. The state's spending lobbies, which stand to lose hundreds of millions of dollars if voter-mandated spending is reformed, will likely spend millions of dollars on advertising campaigns to pass the tax increase and to defeat the spending reform.

"We pledge to mobilize our grassroots army to fight the tax increase," said AFP Arizona chairman Chad Kirkpatrick. "But the state could very easily end up with a gigantic tax increase, and no reforms of voter-protected spending."

AFP Arizona also called the Governor's plan for $1 billion in spending cuts "not nearly enough," and recommended that she and Legislature start with the FY2010 options budget submitted January 15 by the legislative appropriations chairmen. That budget plan called for $2.2 billion in spending reductions.

"If the Legislature starts by trying to cut $1 billion, we will be lucky to end up with $500 million in actual reductions," said Kirkpatrick. "They should start with $2.2 billion, and fight hard to keep that from getting whittled down by the spending lobbies and special interests."