[speedgibson] Speed Gibson: Take Off!

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Posted by Speed Gibson:
Take Off!
http://speedgibson.powerblogs.com/posts/1240791081.shtml


   There's been a common theme repeated in a number of news accounts
   about how the DFL wants to balance the Minnesota state budget to be
   "ready" for the economic recovery to come. This weekend's Almanac
   segment with Representative Paul Marquart was the latest example.
   Marquart is chair of the House Property and Local Tax Division
   committee, who kept repeating the mantra:

     "When you go into this, you have to do more than just look at
     solving the budget. You have to look at how can you a plan that
     positions yourself for a good economic future. So when the economy
     turns around, how can we be ready to take off?"
     ...
     "We can go down the roads of cuts, cuts, cuts and when the economy
     turns around, we're not going to be ready to take advantage of
     that."
     ...
     "When the economy turns around, we're going to be ready to take
     advantage."

   You know what I'm hearing? If we raise the volatile income tax rates
   now, we'll reap a huge surplus when the economy turns around, billions
   more to spend as we please. Ditto the sales tax. They assume of course
   that raising these taxes now won't delay or diminish Minnesota's
   participation in that recovery.
   They also don't seem to understand that significant reliance on
   significantly progressive taxes produces the very instability they now
   face. Making the schedules even more progressive will make future
   deficits even wider, starting with the next biennium. And of course,
   taxes will have to be raised again to cover those deficits, probably
   even more than this round. If the DFL has their way, it's your
   disposal income that's going to take off, for St. Paul you hoser!
   Dane Smith, President of Growth & Justice, was all for it, still stuck
   in his revisionist vision of the Minnesota economy that no longer
   exists, if it ever did. As Minnesota Revenue Commissioner Ward Einess
   reminded them, it's a global economy now where jobs and investment
   flow freely, based in part on, yes, tax policy.
   I must add that Dane Smith continues to disappoint me, offering little
   more than repeated non-facts, non-sequiturs, and irrelevancies. As the
   former chief political reporter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, I
   somehow keep thinking he should be something more than, say, Wy Spano
   or Ember Reichgott Jung.