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State Politics Thu Jun 18 2009
Fine Raise my Taxes But.....
I watched another protest at the Thompson Center today. This time the folks protesting seemed to less folks who might lose a paycheck due to the budget cuts and more folks who will lose services due to the budget cuts.
I know that the states deficit is too big to be addressed by budget cuts alone so some sort of significant revenue enhancement is going to be needed to prevent cuts to all sorts of things in the state budget that are going to be penny dumb and pound really stupid.
Fortunately I am in position where the proposed tax increase is going to cost me more than a the price of a pizza a week (it was used on one of the posters at the protest to illustrate the cost to the average family), so before I give the state some more of my money every year I have a few conditions I want to put on the state budget.
If this is going to happen I know we need to put some Republican votes on the tax increase and that will likely lead to some primary challenges to some Republicans. Why, there are folks in this state who think we can just cut our way out of this or if we just eliminated the pork we would be fine. Some people in the Republican party feel any tax increase is evil and must be stopped.
So if the Republicans are going to put votes on a tax increase they should reasonably expect something in return. You can't basically ignore the Republicans for most of the session and then ask them to help save your bacon without having to give them something in return.
I think Redistricting Reform is a good first step, there are a few other changes I think we should push for as well.
As for the stuff the governor is looking for like recall, I would say that is not really a pressing issue. The deficit that keeps on growing is the problem.
So fine raise my taxes, they may take away my GOP card for that. If you are going to let them do it, lets get something else for the people of Illinois that isn't going to really cost anything in return.
Oh yeah, and remind the voters in 2010 what party was running things when we got into this mess...
OneMan
