On the campaign trail, a recurring theme among Republican candidates is how they have cut taxes and reduced the size of government. For former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, that message is a core part of his presentation.

On June 2 at Gov. Rick Scott's Economic Growth Summit in Orlando, Bush noted how he cut taxes for Floridians. Bush said the following:

"In Florida, for eight years we cut taxes every year, totaling $19 billion."

PolitiFact Florida looked into Bush's record to see if his claim was accurate and reporter Joshua Gillin says Bush gets a HALF TRUE rating. Gillin says there are tax cuts that Bush can take credit for and others where he cannot.

"We took the detailed analysis provided by his campaign and showed it to several economists," Gillin said. "They responded that the methodology that they used to get to the $19 billion figure was pretty clear.  We do have to point out that the $19 billion is in 2007, and it has been adjusted up to cover the time he was in office. The $19 billion includes tax cuts, but that's not the only thing in there.  Adjustments to fees are in there, as well, as well as appropriations and the way that things were appropriated."

Gillin said, though, that some things included in the analysis were items that Bush had no control over. 

"There were two big items in Bush's list," Gillin said. "One was the intangibles tax. This is the amount that you pay on investments and stocks. The other was the federal estate tax. This one is the amount that your estate pays in taxes to the government when you die.  In both of those cases, Bush didn't have any control over those, so our experts questioned whether or not he could take credit for those."

Because Bush provided the detailed analysis to back up his claim, it gave PolitiFact a good overview of his claim.  However, the analysis showed that there were things included that were outside of Bush's control while he was Florida governor, earning this claim a HALF TRUE.

 

SOURCES: Jeb Bush's record on cutting taxes