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This past Sunday, President Obama rallied support for embattled Democrat gubernatorial candidate and current Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown. While the President spoke, rally goers seemed to lose interest with some getting up and leaving. Reuters reported on Sunday: “President Barack Obama made a rare appearance on the campaign trail on Sunday with a rally to support the Democratic candidate for governor in Maryland, but early departures of crowd members while he spoke underscored his continuing unpopularity.”

The flight of rally goers from President Obama and Lt. Gov. Brown’s event is a fitting metaphor for the flight of taxpayers and businesses from the Chesapeake Bay State over the past 8 years of tax hikes and crushing regulations imposed by Gov. Martin O’Malley and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown.

Since defeating Republican Gov. Bob Ehrlich in 2006, O’Malley and Brown have enacted 40 tax hikes that will cost Maryland taxpayers $20 billion by 2018 according to Change Maryland. Between 2007 and 2010, IRS data shows that nearly 31,000 residents have left the state. According to Jim Pettit and Larry Hogan, writing in the Washington Post, of the 31,000 residents leaving the state, “…nearly 11,500 individuals in taxpayer households, went to Virginia. The net loss to Maryland — and Virginia’s gain — is $390 million in annual incomes. A surprising close second in attracting former Marylanders is North Carolina. Combined, that amounts to almost $700 million in annual incomes streaming down the Interstate 95 corridor.” North Carolina enacted major tax reform in 2013, making the state an even more attractive destination for refugees from high tax states like Maryland.

Much like the disgruntled rally goers on Sunday, Maryland’s millionaires fled the state after a 2008 law was signed by Gov. O’Malley enacting a new; higher rate for incomes over a million dollars. The result? Roughly a third of the state’s millionaires left. The Wall Street Journal notes: “One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller’s office concedes is a “substantial decline.” On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year — even at higher rates.”

Besides individual taxpayers fleeing the state, the radical tax and spend policies of O’Malley and Brown has caused a flight of businesses as well – resulting in thousands of jobs relocating outside of Maryland. Just one week ago, the Bechtel Corporation announced it would be moving a large chunk of jobs from Maryland to Virginia. Besides Bechtel, Maryland has seen operations from Northrop Grumman, Hilton Worldwide, SAIC, Volkswagen North America, Coventry, Constellation Energy, and Black & Decker either fold or leave the state. Change Maryland notes: “Since 2007… 6500 small businesses have left or shut down, the second-highest in the region, and just three Fortune 500 companies remain in the state. This is a sharp contrast to 24 large corporate headquarters in Virginia and 23 in Pennsylvania.”

When rally goers walked out on President Obama and Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown this past Sunday, they showed that Marylanders are increasingly turning their backs on the radical tax and spend policies of the Democrats in Maryland and in Washington, D.C.

 

Photo Credit: Edward Kimmel