Romney Rebuttal Enclosed

Michael Medved, gives some useful information for a rebuttal in his article on townhall.com:

http://michaelmedved.townhall.com/blog/g/c6692253-551a-45e4-ba9f-37e740fe9411

Specifically he references the tax foundations statistics on tax for the states:

http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/460.html (Massachusetts)
http://www.taxfoundation.org/taxdata/show/442.html (Arkansas)

We need to prevent Huckabee's Long tenure from being used against him. Let's adjust the discussion to put things in a yearly context.

Massachusetts's tax burden went from 9.8% in the year before Romney took office to 10.5% in his final year. Net increase 0.7% of the economy.
Arkansas tax burden went from 10.1% to 11.1% for Huckabee. Net increase 1.0%.

Now let's adjust for length of term:

RateOfIncrease/Year = (base + total increase)^(1/termInYears) - 1

Romney : (1 + .007)^((1/4) -1 = .001745 = .1745%
Huckabee : (1+ .01)^(1/10) - 1 = .000996 = .0996%

As you can see, Romney's per year increase in tax burden is significantly more than Huckabee's. Think of it this way:

that is .1745/.0996 = 175%.

I could say "Under Mitt Romney's tenure as governor the tax burden in Massachusetts increased 75% faster, than it did under Huckabee in Arkansas."

or another way to say it is to use the table below:

Romney
Year	Tax as % of Economy	% increase
2002	9.80%	N/A
2003	10.00%	2.04%
2004	10.20%	2.00%
2005	10.50%	2.94%
2006	10.50%	0.00%
Average Increase/Year		1.75%
Huckabee
Year	Tax as % of Economy	% increase
1996	10.10%	N/A
1997	10.10%	0.00%
1998	10.20%	0.99%
1999	10.20%	0.00%
2000	10.50%	2.94%
2001	10.50%	0.00%
2002	10.30%	-1.90%
2003	10.00%	-2.91%
2004	10.50%	5.00%
2005	11.20%	6.67%
2006	11.10%	-0.89%
Average Increase/Year		0.99%

These numbers generated from the Tax Foundation tables show that Romney increased the tax burden of his state by an average of 1.75% each year (that is 1.75% more than the last years tax burden, not 1.75% of the economy).

This is significantly more than Huckabee. Huckabee increased the tax burden by only .99% each year.

This means Romney increased his state's tax burden 75% faster than Huckabee increased his state's tax burden.