Partisanship Divides Ohio As Well As Nation

Lately, President Obama and congressional Republicans have been adversaries on all manners of issues ranging from guns to federal spending. However, in the thick of the budget debate, the president attempted to reach out to those in the GOP with the hope of encouraging bipartisanship.Throughout the sequester talks, GOP senators dined with Obama, while members of the House took part in a meeting with the president. Unfortunately, the fruitless outcome of these efforts proved just how deeply partisan divides run these days in Washington.“Ultimately, it may be that the differences are just too wide. It may be that, ideologically, if their position is, ‘We can’t do any revenue,’ or, ‘We can only do revenue if we gut Medicare or gut Social Security or gut Medicaid,’ if that’s the position, then we’re probably not going to be able to get a deal,” President Obama said in an interview.These “differences” of which the president speaks are not only slowing business in the nation’s capital. In Ohio, Democrats and Republicans sometimes regard each other just as coldly as they do in Washington.Despite former Ohio Senate President Tom Niehaus’s boast that the Ohio Senate passed 80 percent of its bills with bipartisan support, the upper house didn’t feel like such a cooperative environment to Democrats. Ohio Democrats complain that they were boxed out from shaping bills on important issues.Senate Democratic Leader Eric Kearney told a fact-checking site, "A lot of the really important ones they push through probably didn’t [have bipartisan support].”Republican Gov. John Kasich has also found himself at odds with Democrats during his time as Ohio’s governor.The governor, a fiscal conservative, has made no excuses for his effort to slim his state’s budget the past couple years he has held office. Although the 2013 version, or budget 2.0 as it has been dubbed, doesn’t contain the sort of ammunition Democrats may have hoped for, there are still parts of the budget which haven’t sat well with the left.On taxes, perhaps the strongest catalyst for partisan politics, Democrats have charged that the tax plan of Kasich’s budget favors the wealthy. Kasich’s intention is a 20 percent tax cut over the next 3 years. Unfortunately, studies have found that this will result in low-income Ohioans paying more taxes.Kasich has also stirred opposition from Democrats who dislike his school-funding formula and education policy changes. This past year, as he was preparing his budget, Kasich advised schools to prepare to run a tighter ship and gave them a formula to help them do so. The governor has also proposed stripping away regulations on education, something that concerns Democrats who believe that regulation is essential in protecting the students’ interests.Budget 2.0 is currently working its way through the general assembly. Partisanship will undoubtedly play a role in its future, and will certainly play in both state and national politics as 2013 continues.