Gov. Branstad has once again shown his preference for profits over people.

He did so on Thursday by vetoing a portion of Senate File 533, the Standing Appropriations Bill, that included an increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit for households making less than $45,000 a year. To put it simply, he vetoed a tax cut for some 240,000 Iowa families.

He did so because he apparently wants to revise Iowa’s tax policy using a more holistic, comprehensive approach. That approach, of course, might include his plan to assess commercial property taxes based on 60 percent of that property’s value instead of the current 100 percent valuation.

Or it could include his idea to cut corporate income taxes in Iowa by 50 percent.

He vetoed the language, he said, because the state would lose some $28.5 million in revenue over the next two years. He also stated his preference for tax cuts that would bring “new business jobs” to this state.

But while tax cuts for businesses give them additional revenue to hire workers and invest in the means of production (to the extent that they exist in a postindustrial economy), they are not guaranteed to do so. It is equally possible that the recipient companies would simply announce higher profits to their owners rather than benefit the state of Iowa or its people.

Tax cuts in the hands of families, however, have greater potential to drive the economy. Even if they save their money in bank accounts or retirement funds, their financial institutions will loan it out and invest it. Or the families may remodel their homes, buy new cars or repair old ones, have more opulent Christmas and birthday celebrations, go on vacations — in short, create more demand.

Either the governor is unwilling to accept the step forward taken by the Legislature (the House of which is controlled 60-40 by members of his own party), or he prefers corporate profits to meaningful action on behalf of the people he’s supposed to look out for.