Ohio Republicans are living in Denial

Ohio's drug epidemic, surging welfare spending, and slow job growth spell trouble for the future.

But few Ohio Republicans seem concerned.

Republican Gov. Mike DeWine and the supermajority Republicans hold in Ohio's General Assembly sprang into action to raise fuel taxes this spring after John Kasich, DeWine’s Republican predecessor, saddled the state with infrastructure debt. Their disinclination to pair the tax hikes with reforms that could preclude future tax increases was unsurprising. Nor was it a shock when DeWine signed a state budget this summer emphasizing “investments” instead of overdue health, labor, pension, or tax reforms.

Perhaps DeWine and the legislature expect to coast on tepid economic growth, avoiding the same reforms that Kasich had avoided in his zeal to placate lobbyists and labor bosses while he ran for president. But if we keep putting able-bodied, working-age, childless adults on Medicaid, failing to protect workers from forced union fees, enrolling public employees in defined-benefit pension plans, and refusing to simplify our municipal tax system, Ohio will become a fiscal basket case.

At first glance, the past several years of income tax cuts have been enough for Ohio’s economy to hum along without contentious reforms. Ohio’s private-sector job total of 4.8 million makes for good headlines, with employment in the state near an all-time high and increasing every year since 2011.

The picture isn’t so pretty when you compare Ohio with other states. Ohio’s job growth rate has trailed the national average each month since October 2012. As other states set new records, it may wind up taking Ohio two decades to get back to the private-sector job count of 4.9 million we had in March 2000.

Employment numbers aren’t the only cause for alarm. The Census Bureau estimates that Ohio’s population grew by 1.3% from 2010-2018 — slower than 38 states, and at less than a quarter of the nation’s 6% growth. A 2018 interstate migration study from moving company United Van Lines ranked Ohio in the top 10 for net outbound moves for the fifth year straight.

If Ohio can’t keep up with the rest of the country with Kasich’s JobsOhio using taxpayer money to pick winners in favored industries amid a bull market and a growing economy, what will happen to us during the next recession?

Even as job opportunities in Ohio returned after the past two recessions and a manufacturing exodus, the number of drug overdose deaths in our state climbed every year from 2014-2017, based on the latest official Centers for Disease Control figures. In 2017, Ohio’s drug overdose mortality rate was the nation’s second-worst, at more than twice the national average.

“Thank God we expanded Medicaid, because that Medicaid money is helping to rehab people,” Gov. Kasich boasted at a 2017 press conference. Records from his own administration revealed that not even one-tenth of the Medicaid expansion spending goes toward addiction treatment.

Although provisional CDC data show a welcome decline in overdose deaths last year, Ohio still suffered nearly 80% more fatal overdoses in 2018 than it had in 2013.

This makes Medicaid expansion, in effect since 2014, a prime example of how Ohio Republicans govern: Kasich said expanding Medicaid would address the drug crisis at a cost of $13 billion in seven years, and in six years it has cost taxpayers $24 billion while the drug crisis has gotten worse. DeWine, elected as a "rock solid conservative," hasn’t curtailed the new welfare program, because Medicaid expansion funnels billions of dollars in federal deficit spending into Ohio, and federal money papers over plenty of policy sins.

Among the state's many anti-addiction efforts is an ad campaign imploring parents not to live in Denial, Ohio, when it comes to drug abuse. Predictable fallout of the next economic downturn might be avoided if state lawmakers would just move away from Denial, but unfortunately they seem intent on relocating the state capitol there.

Jason Hart is a writer and web developer based in central Ohio.