State response to unsustainable budgets - raise taxes

Tam at View From The Porch comments on the unsustainable budgets states are rapidly accumulating and their proposal to fix them - raise taxes.

Meanwhile, with tax revenues cratering, state budget shortfalls are getting huge, as the towering entitlement edifices of places like California and New York are left with nothing to support their pie in the sky programs:


Of course, this leads to talk about fixing the problem by raising taxes, instead of shutting off the spigot to the trough

She finishes with the question: State legislators have a historic opportunity to slash deadwood here, rather than continuing to try to buy Band-Aids by the bushel.

You all know the answer to that - of course not.

Instead they'll start shooting the hostages first - close schools, reduce police and fire departments, road construction and winter servicing - anything to make the tax payers howl and cough up money for the essential services.

Meanwhile they'll keep plugging along and expand the non-essential but very lucrative (for politicians and their supporters, anyways) services and budget areas of government that caused the budget shortfall in the first place.

That is the Democrat plan so far here in Michigan and it may be working: Polls say Michiganians back higher taxes -

Michiganians are willing to shoulder a little more of the tax burden to spur economic growth and pay for essential state services, according to a new kind of scientific poll released Thursday by Stanford University, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and MacNeil/Lehrer Productions.

Two kinds of public opinion sampling -- a conventional survey of 300 residents and a "deliberative poll" that brought a cross-section of 314 people in Lansing for a weekend in November to hash out the issues -- found people willing to raise sales and income taxes and cut business taxes.

After Governor Granholm's and the Democrats slashing school funding, State Police, road repair and revenue sharing with local units of government for things like police and snow removal services and otherwise balancing the budget with cuts to the essential services, its no wonder the public is crying "Uncle" (or is it "Auntie" in this case?

Look for more of this tactic in a state near you.