Taxes & Budget

I'm sure you've heard the old adage, "If it isn't broke, don't fix it."

That applies just about everywhere but in government, where the motto seems to be, "If it isn't broke, then fix it until it is!" The Democrats are certainly preparing to do that to our economy both nationally and in Colorado.

Having never met a tax increase they didn't like, the Democrat leadership in Washington unveiled their budget proposal recently. In direct violation of their pledge to not raise taxes, this budget will amount to a tax increase of $900 billion over just five years according to Senators Charles Grassley and Judd Gregg who peeled the skin off the Democrats budget onion in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial [link]. As ranking member and former chairman of the Senate Finance and Budget Committee respectively, both Senators come to this argument with formidable credentials.

Read "Don't Mess With Success," by Judd Gregg and Chuck Grassley (subscription requred)

Of course, the Democrats loudly protest that they aren't increasing taxes; they just won’t extend the current tax rates that were lowered in 2001 and 2003 by the Republican Congress and the Bush Administration. American's hopefully aren't that dumb! If the government gets $900 billion that would otherwise be in the pockets of the people that earned it -- that's a tax increase!

Senators Grassley and Gregg articulate the personal impact of this assault on everyday Americans. "Under a Democratic budget that does not extend existing tax policies, the lowest-income families who pay taxes will see their taxes increase by 33%. The $1,000 per child tax credit would be cut in half, and the standard deduction for married couples would be cut by $1,700. Forty-five million working families with two children would pay $3,000 more in taxes per year, equivalent to a 5% pay cut." It's very real, and very personal -– and it's not just about the sticking it to the rich.

The very same shell game is being played under the gold dome in Denver by the Democrat leadership. The new majority all but promised a chicken in every pot during the last campaign, but also promised that they could fulfill everyone's dreams without raising taxes.

Already we've seen that they apparently believe a promise made is a promise that can be broken. They have proposed a 29% increase in driver's license renewal fees, a 50% increase for personalized license plates, and now they are moving on to the big stuff.

After getting a bloody nose for going after the Severance Tax monies that are set aside to assist local government in mitigating the impacts of energy production, Statehouse Democrats have now announced their plan to "freeze" property taxes – just the floor, of course, not the ceiling. They can still go up.

The principle advocate for this in the Senate, Sue Windells of Lakewood, argues that this isn't a tax increase, because they aren’t really increasing the tax rate – they just stop it from ever going down as it would have done because of Colorado's constitutional tax provisions.

Well, according to the Rocky Mountain News this gimmick would amount to the state sucking an additional $84 million out of the pockets of home owners.

When government gets more money, it's a tax increase. It'd be nice if politicians were at least honest about it.

And where did all that Ref C money disappear to anyway? Instead of $3.7 billion, the most recent estimate of that "non-tax-increase" is almost $6 billion! At least Governor Bill Ritter is sticking to that part of his Colorado Promise. When questioned during the campaign about capping the Ref C revenue and returning the surplus to the taxpayers, Ritter declined saying "We (government) need the money, and we need to spend it."

Washington wants $900 billion and Denver wants $84 million. The most frightening part is that they've only just begun. Many Democrats are promising "Universal Healthcare" -- Hillary-Care revisited.

As P.J. O'Rourke famously said, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free."