I think it is pretty safe to say that this budget fix really doesn’t fix anything.
Of course most of us knew that nothing would be fixed.
The budget repairs are nothing more than a shell game.
Disguising tax increases, budget shortages, increasing our debt and borrowing from areas that cannot afford to give up their dollars, does nothing to actually fix the problem.
The problem is the budget is too high; currently we will not be bringing in enough money to cover for the shortages in the budget.
It is so simple to understand, in order to pay the bills with under the current level of spending the state legislature needs to either increase revenue (increase taxes) or cut spending.
It is just that simple.
This budget proposal really does very little of either one of these.
Because the liberals hate Walmart, they increased their taxes by $15 Million. As I was talking to someone yesterday, the ink will not even be dry on the new budget before Walmart has figured out a way to not have to pay this tax either.
Rumor has it that there were $69 million in spending cuts. I cannot see it, but even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, there is still a problem.
$69 million worth of cuts and $15 million in new taxes does not add up to a fix for a $500 million budget shortfall.
I certainly understand the quandary that the legislators are in. Either they increase taxes or they cut programs. Both reactions to the budget means political suicide, or at least that is the perception. In politics, perception is reality.
This past Monday, after a couple of city council meeting, I did battle with a very nice gentleman on this very subject. This nice gentleman very methodically explained to me why it was necessary to continue to increase taxes, even during this economically trouble time.
You see, he explained, when the price of gas goes up on our pocketbooks, then the price that the government is forced to pay also goes up. Unless government continues to raise your taxes, then they will not be able to keep up with increased cost themselves.
He further explained that health care costs are going up and taxes just had to go up or there was no way to keep up with these changes.
Over and over I listened to excuses as to why taxes just had to give up.
I finally asked the nice gentleman how were taxpayers supposed to keep up with not only their own increased health care cost and gas costs, plus they had to more in taxes to the government? He could not answer me.
Even as reasonable as some of these arguments may seem from the tax and spend liberals, we, as Republicans, need to be true to our word and fulfill the commitments we made to our constituents.
When running for office, we all made the commitment not to raise taxes and that we needed to cut spending. We ran as fiscal conservatives and we were elected because of we promised to be fiscal conservatives.
In this economic downturn the absolute worst thing for a government to do is increase taxes and increase spending.
Now that the time has once again presented itself, we still have conservatives that are having a tough time doing what is right.
We made the commitment, now we must follow through.
This is not only true of Republicans, but many Democrats made the same promises to their constituents.
My state senator, Bob Wirch, actually calls himself a fiscal conservative, as do many other democrats.
Well, this is a chance for all true fiscal conservatives to stand up.
Will you keep your promise to the taxpayers or will you continue to make play these shell games?
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