CARAHAN'S TAXES

So Gov. Mel Carnahan now says he wants to eliminate Missouri's sales tax on food. With an election a little over two months away in which he is asking for another four-year lease on the governor's mansion, talk of tax-cutting seems just the thing. Hard-pressed Missouri taxpayers might ask where, exactly, the governor has been these last four years.

We know where he was in 1993, his first year in office. He was busy betraying his 1992 campaign commitment, made short months earlier, to submit a tax increase for education to the public vote he had solemnly promised. this governor worked hard to push through Senate Bill 380 ($350 million in higher taxes), together with other tax bills. Before that first legislative session of the first Carnahan year was over, Missourians were laboring under nearly a half-billion dollars in higher taxes. There had been no public vote on any of them.

By last year, a Missouri economy that even his and the president's higher taxes couldn't kill was gushing tax revenue into Jefferson City at a record pace, and state government was literally awash in money. So much was this the case that, for the first time since the 1980 adoption of the Hancock Amendment, an administration announced tax refunds were owing because growth in state revenue had outpaced personal income growth. In other words, Mel Carnahan had over-taxed Missourians and had to pay us back.

Against this backdrop, House Republicans had for three years been pushing for elimination of the sales tax on food. Missouri is one of only 19 states that tax groceries. This year, the bill had plenty of support as it passed out of committee and seemed poised for passage. Still, a Missouri House, Senate and executive branch entirely in Democratic hands failed to deliver this or any other tax cut for Missourians. All this, even though the governor had, with great fanfare, promised a tax cut in his January state-of-the-state address.

The governor had his opportunity to deliver the tax cuts he promised. Missourians, who should look forward to elimination of the sales tax on food together with other tax cuts, will rightly view Carnahan's conversion to the ranks of tax cutters with plenty of election-year cynicism.