Now Boys....Play Nice....

What a bunch of jokers we've got running for governor. These guys deserve each other.

From the Omaha World-Herald:

Taxes again took center stage Tuesday in Nebraska's race for the Republican governor nomination.

U.S. Rep. Tom Osborne and Omaha businessman Dave Nabity said they would launch private-sector reviews of state government to look for ways to give Nebraskans a tax cut.

The two talked taxes after Gov. Dave Heineman pledged to unveil a tax cut in the coming weeks based on optimistic forecasts of the state economy and the state's tax revenues.

Osborne said he wants tax cuts, but he again chastised Heineman for not cutting taxes last year and presiding over a 7.1 percent increase in state spending.

"It's very popular for politicians to promote tax cuts during an election year. The fact is that during the last session, the opportunity was there to rescind some of the 2003 tax increases that were supposed to be 'temporary,'" Osborne said Monday in a statement.

Nabity said he would seek a $600 million tax cut over two years with the help of a performance audit review that would look for ways to trim state government. He also would like to cut the state's income tax rate in half and trim property taxes by 20 percent....

Nabity declined to say specifically what programs he would cut. "It really would be irresponsible to say what I'm going to do right now. There might be some agencies that may need more funding and some may need to be eliminated," he said....

(Heineman) campaign manager, Carlos Castillo, said it was time for both Osborne and Nabity to offer specifics about how they would cut state government....

"Congressman Osborne has been part of a Congress that's given us runaway spending and pork-barrel deficits. The most Dave Nabity has given us is platitudes," Castillo said.

Hate to agree with our old friend Uncle Carlos, but these attacks against Heineman are just bizarre. For starters, who does Osborne think he's fooling declaring how popular it is to support tax cuts during an election year?

DUH! As if that's not exactly what Osborne himself is doing, even retroactively to work in some cheap and pathetic political jabs.

Meanwhile, both Nabity and Osborne need to recognize something about state government that is supposed to protect it from Republicans' free-spending, debt-loving ways - Nebraska is required to have an actual BALANCED BUDGET.

Remember that thing where we only spend as much as we bring in - the legacy of President Clinton that it only took Republicans a matter of months to destroy in 2001? Yeah, one of those.

What it means is that what's categorically "irresponsible" is to propose tax cuts in state government without offering-up where the reduced spending is going to come from.

Of course, with Heineman's own tax cut proposal supposedly coming our way in the next few weeks, there's a pretty good chance we'll be seeing a Hat Trick when it comes to these Nebraska Republicans' politically-motivated fiscal foolishness. Again, they really do deserve each other.