The Underground Conservative

When things get tight money-wise at home, families start trimming expenses, need and needless, as my father used to say.

Don’t expect Big Government to go on a diet when things get tough. States are looking at imposing brand-new taxes, eliminating existing tax exemptions and raising existing taxes to meet expected budget shortfalls due to declining tax revenue.

Governors want to levy higher taxes next year on clothes, soft drinks, gasoline, auto licenses and other items that likely will hit low- and middle-income families struggling to make ends meet in a deepening recession the hardest.

Officials say they are required by law to balance budgets and that tax increases are necessary as state governments face sharply declining tax revenues, but fiscal analysts say raising these taxes during an economic downturn will only worsen local economies and prolong the recession.

One of the most sweeping revenue packages comes out of New York, where Democratic Gov. David A. Paterson wants to raise $4 billion with 137 new or increased taxes and fees in the budget, including an 18 percent so-called “anti-obesity tax” on non-diet soft drinks. Satellite TV, cigars and professional licensing fees also are targets.

Eliminating wasteful spending is never an option, since we all know there isn’t one dime of spending that can ever be actually cut.

This guy actually gets it:

“Middle-income families do not get wage increases during a recession, but neither should the states. Families have to cut back, and so should state government. They should cut spending,” said Chris Edwards, who tracks state budgets at the libertarian Cato Institute. “These states should have been retrenching after budget increases of 7 percent over the last two years, but they repeated the same mistakes they made in the late ’90s, assuming the good times were going to last forever.”

So does this guy:

“Most reporters are covering the state budgets and thinking ‘Oh, the poor states,’ and no one is looking at this from the perspective of the taxpayers who are the ones whose wallets are going to be on the line,” said political strategist Trent Duffy.

What states are doing is the same things that’s been done here in Wisconsin: redefining a tax as a fee or some other term, trying to remove the stigma of a tax increase. Auto registration fees, for example. It’s a tax, no matter what you call it. You cannot legally drive a car with expired license plates, so it’s a tax. Jack that up $20 a year and other “fees” like it and it hurts the average taxpayer. It’s money sucked out of the economy and sent to Big Government.

Reminds me of the quote from the late Everett Dirksen, one of the few honest politicians to come out of the state of Illinois (Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson being the others):

A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.

For the average taxpayer, myself included, $20 here and $20 is real money. When government takes it away from me, I can’t spend it on something I need.

Wisconsin is facing a projected $5.4 billion budget shortfall. Just how is that going to be covered?

Gov. Jim Milhous Doyleone, true to form, talks tax increased. The proposed hospital tax and the oil company tax won’t bring in anywhere near enough, let alone what is projected. Diamond Jim wants to leave 2,800 state jobs unfilled, eliminated by attrition. Refresh my memory: didn’t he plan on eliminating 10,000 or so state jobs when he first ran in 2002?

Look for the sales tax exemption to be eliminated on virtually everything, and to be raised to 6 percent. Income taxes may also be raised.

All of this will have a devastating effect on the state economy, which is already with one foot in the grave and the other on the banana peel.

Milwaukee will get hit worse, because of the planned 1 percent increase in the county sales tax and the mandated sick days.

And with the Legislature already planning on repealing the QEO for schools, look for school spending on anything other than education to skyrocket and property taxes to go up with that, since local school districts will no longer need voter approval for tax increases.

At least we don’t have to listen to whiny educrats saying, “It’s for the children” and other tax-and-spenders telling us, “It’s only another $5 a month” any more. Which it never was anyway. It was always more. Now it’s going to be even more than that.

We’re about to see what one party rule is really like, here in Wisconsin and across the United States.

The tax-and-spend crowd is about to attach a powerful vacuum cleaner to our wallets and bank accounts.

Elections have consequences.