The same woman who fought to pass a 1 cent sales tax in 2010, is now celebrating the end of the tax. Brewer, who is pushing Medicaid expansion, is attempting to portray herself as a fiscal conservative now that her last tax is expired.
At a press conference on Friday, the governor released numbers that she said justified said that her support for the tax increase. The governor’s office released figures which showed that an estimated $2.739 billion was taken out of the taxpayers’ wallets and moved into school construction and health and safety programs.
In the senate’s budget passed last month, the governor’s supporters loaded up the budget with extravagances. The pro-Brewercare republicans allowed almost every budget item desired by the democrats to be tacked on in order to maintain their coalition to get Brewercare through the Senate.
At her press conference the former hairdresser-turned-governor said she had “wishful hopefulness” that a budget would be addressed by the House next week. She predicted, or hoped that the budget “will pass out and they can pass the rest of their bills and we can sine die and you all won’t have anything to write about,” referring to the press.
One Capitol insider said, “If she believes what she just said, she is stupid. If she believes that we believe what she just said, she believes that we are stupid.”
It is unlikely that Brewer will have the same luck in the House. The House is supposed to tackle the budget sometime during the second week of June. Few believe that it will make it out of the Appropriations Committee.