(Right Pride) – Today, in light of Senate Majority Leader Steven Horsford’s comments last month opposing the Modified Business Tax, Right Pride poses the question, “Which Senate Majority Leader Will Go to Carson City Next Year?”
Senator Horsford, while speaking at an LGBT business alliance luncheon in July, said that he opposed the Modified Business Tax and “any tax on businesses, regardless of their ability to pay.” This came as a surprise to some, including Right Pride, as Horsford voted to double the tax in 2009 as part of the largest single-session tax increase in Nevada history. Right Pride has already called on Senator Horsford to introduce and help pass legislation repealing the tax he now claims to oppose.
“Given Senator Horsford’s past statements, one wonders which Senate Majority Leader will return to Carson City next year,” said Mark Ciavola, president of Right Pride, Nevada’s only organization representing gay conservatives and their allies. “Mr. Horsford has a history of saying one thing and doing another, including comments in 2008 that he would not favor tax increases during a recession.”
In a recently discovered article on the Las Vegas Review-Journal website, Senator Horsford told the editorial board in September 2008, “I won’t support tax increases – not when the private sector is losing revenue and losing jobs.” Horsford continued, “The general fund needs to be managed in a way that doesn’t allow growth beyond population growth and inflation.”
Horsford went against both statements after he was elected, when he voted to significantly increase the size of the general fund by helping to pass roughly $800 million in tax increases – in the middle of a recession.
“Voters in Nevada, including small business owners and those that are unemployed, deserve to know where the Majority Leader and the rest of the Democratic Party stand when it comes to creating an environment favorable to putting people back to work,” Ciavola concluded.
