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For Republicans, every day brings new reason to oppose tax hikes

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Republicans are seizing every chance they get to undercut Gov. Jerry Brown’s campaign for tax hikes.

On Thursday, headlines that Capitol staffers got raises led to press releases excoriating Democrats for supporting Brown’s ballot measure, known as Proposition 30.

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“The politicians behind Prop 30 want to raise our taxes so they can continue giving raises to hundreds of staffers and protect their own paychecks,” said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., in a statement.

The day before, Republicans hammered Brown for approving initial funding for high-speed rail and related transportation projects.

“There should be no doubt that Governor Brown has thrown our children’s education under the tracks to build this train,” said Sen. Joel Anderson (R-Alpine) in a statement.

Brown wants to increase the sales tax by a quarter-cent and levies on the wealthy by one to three percentage points. If voters reject the taxes, he says, public education will be cut by billions of dollars and the school year could be cut by three weeks.

The governor has said the taxes are necessary to improve the state’s finances and dismissed criticism of the ambitious bullet train project, which is estimated to cost $68 billion total.

‘We can’t stop California because we have a tax measure in November,’ he said in Oakland earlier this month.

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-- Chris Megerian in Sacramento
twitter.com/chrismegerian

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