I'm Verbally Rioting In The Streets

Well, I'm pissed but since I need to stay at work in order to collect my paycheck, I'm deciding to riot at my desk rather than in the streets.

To paraphrase former President Ronald Regan's line from his nomination acceptance speech at the 1984 RNC "I would say that state legislators spend money like drunken sailors on shore leave, but that would be unfair to drunken sailors."

What is going on in New York and California this week is just absolute madness. New York Governor David Paterson submitted a budget this week that raises or imposes 137 new fees and taxes. In the middle of an economic downturn, he's proposing to raise taxes. In California, the Democrats who are constantly thwarted by the minority GOP in the legislature when they attempt to raise taxes, are now proposing to go around the GOP and impose new taxes by calling them "fees." They are attempting to cut a budget deficit that could reach $41 billion in the the next 18 months.

This quote particularly galls me.

"I still believe in bipartisanship," Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) said at a Capitol news conference. "But there is an even greater responsibility than practicing bipartisanship, and that is to govern. And that is what we intend to do here today."

Your answer to governing is to raise taxes? That's it?

How about you cut spending? Cut the state income tax rate. Cut the corporate income tax rate. You might even have to impose cuts to the state's workforce. Oh wait, employee unions are resisting and they donate to Democratic campaigns so that is off the table.

And among the taxes you intend to raise are the state sales tax, the gasoline tax, and add a 2.5% surcharge to everyone's state income tax bill. These are three taxes that will hit the poorest Californians the hardest. I could at least understand their argument if they wanted to raise the top income tax bracket of 10% on people making over $1 million. But 2.5% on everybody? Are you freaking crazy?!

Has Darrell Steinberg seen the latest figures about people leaving California? For the fourth year in a row, more people left the state than moved in.

And where did they move to? Arizona, Nevada, Washington, and Texas. I'd like to note for the record that all of those states have lower income taxes than California. Texas has no state income tax. Yet Texas is not struggling to balance their state budget.

In 1998, people in the top 20th percentile paid 56% of all taxes in California. I cannot find the most up to date figures for 2007 but I'd be willing to bet that the same top 20 percentile now pays a higher percentage, if we look at the federal tax data which shows that people in the top 20th percentile pay 80% of all federal taxes.

What is becoming clear to me, and probably to some other people in California, is that you cannot balance the budget on the backs of a few millionaires and immigrant labor. It doesn't work.

When the dot-com boom was happening, did the state put away money for a rainy day? No. It spent and spent and spent.

And I'm going to spread the blame around to California voters as well. They keep approving bonds issues for projects like a high speed rail system when the state is broke. For the record, I voted "no" on every single issue that asked me for money this year. We're broke. We can't afford it. Stop spending money.

You know what I want for Christmas? I would like the California Legislators to come up with a budget that does not require raising taxes in a recession.

However, I'm not holding my breath.