As the entire nation confronts the problem of unfunded mandates and bloated government spending, individual states are doing the same.
Republican governors Chris Christie (New Jersey) and Scott Walker (Wisconsin) are letting government unions know that they can no longer expect to receive the kind of benefits and pensions they were falsely promised by union leaders and past state politicians whose campaigns were funded by union coffers. These governors are handling the displaced anger of union members who are only beginning to experience a little of what private sector workers have known for years. They know that increasing taxes will only cause businesses to leave their states and wreak further hardship on taxpayers already reeling from a struggling economy. Governors Christie and Walker are letting union members know that they are not entitled to exceptional treatment when the state is “broke.”
Gov. Jan Brewer touts bill to reduce business taxes, create jobs
Gov. Jan Brewer and lawmakers unveiled a wide-ranging package of tax cuts and incentives on Monday that they believe will usher in a new era of economic prosperity.
Using Arizona’s 99th birthday as a platform, they said a special legislative session this week will map a new course for Arizona’s economy: one that relies more on high-paying, skilled jobs and less on the boom-and-bust cycle of housing growth.
“This is the most historic piece of legislation to be heard by the Legislature in decades,” Brewer said at a news conference.
The wide-ranging Senate Bill 1001 is filled with tax breaks and incentives for businesses large and small. The legislative budget office estimated its cost at $538 million by 2018, when all the tax cuts are phased in. Brewer’s office offered a lower tab, about $400 million.
The proposal comes as Arizona faces its fourth straight year of budget deficits. This year’s gap is estimated at $763 million and a $1.15 billion deficit in fiscal 2012, according to Brewer’s office.
Illinois lawmakers approved a 66 percent increase in the state income tax in the early morning hours of January 12, part of a dramatic effort to address the state’s critical budget crisis. The Democrat-controlled legislature passed the increase at the tail end of a lame duck session, with some lawmakers who supported the measure scheduled to leave office hours later when a new General Assembly was sworn in.
The bill (SB 2505) passed in the House by a 60 to 57 vote late January 11, with the state senate approving the measure by a razor-thin 30 to 29 margin in the early morning hours of January 12th. Democratic Governor Pat Quinn had pushed the bill as a temporary fix to staunch a budget deficit that could hit $15 billion this year. His office said that the increase, which will raise the personal income tax rate from three percent to five percent while hiking the corporate tax rate from 4.8 percent to seven percent, will generate some $6.8 billion per year for the state’s coffers.
According to the Associated Press, under the plan the tax increase will be combined “with strict 2 percent limits on spending growth,” as well as a safety switch to cancel the plan should state officials violate the limits. “The plan’s supporters warned that rising pension and health care costs probably will eat up all the spending allowed by the caps, forcing cuts in other areas of government,” reported the AP.
In rhetorical fashion, Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan blasted Republican lawmakers for dragging their feet on the measure, arguing that they remained on the sidelines instead of working with the Democratic majority to solve the state’s record budget woes. GOP legislators countered that they weren’t invited to take part in negotiations, where they would have proposed something other than more taxes and continued runaway spending.
Read the rest.
The Phoenix Water Department wants to raise your rates another 7 percent next year.
That’s on top of a 40 percent water rate increase over the past 5 years. And there is more coming: The Water Department is seeking rate hikes of 7 to 5 percent every single year out to 2016. Those are cumulative increases, which behave like compound interest.
Here’s the proposed rate hike schedule:
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March, 2011 – 7 percent increase
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March, 2012 – 7 percent increase
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March, 2013 – 6.25 percent increase
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March, 2014 – 5.5 percent increase
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March, 2015 – 5 percent increase
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March, 2016 — 5 percent increase
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The columns below that appeared in the Arizona Republic show what you and your family pay every year for government excesses. Read the facts for yourself to see what you’re paying and what it’s going for. The more people who know about this, the more likely it is to be addressed, so please forward this on to as many people as possible. See below full article or to open the link later please click HERE. | ||
(CNSNews.com) – The federal government spent $3.1 million on TV ads featuring actor Andy Griffith touting the new health care law that a non-partisan watchdog group says are misleading.
Andy Griffith (AP Photo)
The first ad, entitled “1965,” featured Griffith saying, “This year, as always, we’ll have our guaranteed benefits. And with the new health care law, more good things are coming.”
But the non-partisan FactCheck.org says some 10 million Medicare Advantage recipients will see their benefits cut by about $43 a month.
“Currently, about one in every four beneficiaries is enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan,” said FactCheck.org, a project of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center.
The House will debate and vote Thursday on a bill to renew tax cuts for those earning under $250,000 and for families receiving the earned income tax credit, but the legislation puts Republicans in the position of having to vote against it in order to include high-income earners in an alternative bill.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said Wednesday that the legislation will incorporate statutory pay-as-you-go, or PAYGO, rules that require any spending to be zeroed in savings elsewhere.
“I’m hopeful we’ll be able to pass that bill, maybe unanimously,” Hoyer said.
(CNSNews.com) – A budget-balancing proposal from the libertarian CATO Institute achieves fiscal equilibrium in only ten years. The plan drastically cuts federal spending, reforms entitlements and makes permanent the Bush-era tax rates.
Written by Director of Tax Policy Studies Chris Edwards, the plan spares no area of federal spending in its quest to control the federal budget.
“Federal spending is soaring, and government debt is piling up at more than a trillion dollars a year. Official projections show rivers of red ink for years to come unless policymakers enact major budget reforms. Unless spending is cut, the United States is headed down the road to economic ruin,” the plan says.
The plan proposes to cut spending by $1 trillion annually by 2020, which would reduce spending to its late-1990s level of 18 percent of GDP. The plan also extends the Bush-era tax rates indefinitely, which Edwards estimates will bring revenues back to their traditional average of 18 percent of GDP, once the recession ends.
The plan focuses on spending cuts, arguing that the federal government has moved into areas it has no business being in and ought to be removed from.
“In recent decades, the federal government has expanded into hundreds of areas that should be left to state and local governments, businesses, charities, and individuals. That expansion is sucking the life out of the private economy and creating a top-down bureaucratic society that is alien to American traditions. Cutting federal spending would enhance civil liberties by dispersing power from Washington.”
