Monday, January 17, 2011

Life in "Progress" State - Illinois edition

Imagine that. The NY Times backs the suicide pact common sense people know as the Illinois tax hikes..........

For years, Illinois, like so many states, pretended that it had not fallen off a budgetary cliff. It was spending too much and taking in too little revenue, but every year it would kick its problems into the next. Unable to pay its bills, it finally accepted reality last week and raised taxes on incomes and businesses — a first step toward getting its house in order.

The action was immediately ridiculed by several governors around the nation who are still pretending that they can cut their way out of the enormous shortfalls they face, without raising taxes. Wisconsin and Indiana predicted a windfall of angry corporations and residents would head their way from Illinois. Even Gov. Chris Christie, the New Jersey Republican, vowed to fly to Illinois to invite businesses there to defect to his state.

That makes great political theater. But businesses and voters in Illinois, and around the country, should take a closer look at the facts and figures, including their own.

After 22 years of not raising income taxes, Illinois saw its budget shortfall grow to $15 billion. It had the lowest state credit rating in the nation, and it wasn’t paying its bills to hospitals and schools.

Notice that they conveniently forgot to mention sales tax of which Illinois has one of the highest in the nation.

In addition, if you have stable tax rates, the inflationary increases in tax receipts should cover inflationary increases in state services. When this is the case, you should never have to increase taxes of any kind.

Let me ask Mr/Ms Progressive. Illinois has been a state for nearly 200 years. I'm just wondering if all of these state agencies have been in existence for the life of the state.......


I'm thinking that Illinois got along just fine without all these agencies. Did they have a Human Services Department during the days of Lincoln? In addition, are you telling me that you can't merge the lottery commission and gaming board among others under one agency?

More....

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Department of Veterans Affairs? Is that for the state militia or what? Last I checked, veterans worked for the federal government. Am I just ignorant or is this ridiculous?

Anonymous said...

I love how Illinois democrats seem to just assume that all businesses can just absorb the additional tax expense.

They also assume that simply raising rates by x percent will increase tax revenue by x percent. It never ever works out that way. Another example of how libs have no clue how an economy works.