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Monday, December 10, 2007
Don’t shift taxes, Republicans; be honest with voters
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Republicans who run Georgia need to be honest with us.
If they want to create a new social program — and many of them do — they should make the case, levy the taxes and appropriate the money from the general fund of the state. Simple. Easy. If it’s worth doing and if it’s a higher priority than other compelling needs, legislators should levy the taxes and do it.
Instead, House Speaker Glenn Richardson is proposing a $10 per year tax on vehicles, to go with Gov. Sonny Perdue’s proposed add-on fine for speeders, to fund a statewide trauma network. The vehicle tax would generate about $85 million while the tax on speeders would add another $8 million to $10 million annually. A trauma network would require upward of $100 million per year.
Newt Gingrich once described former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole as “tax collector for the welfare state.” With the proposals Richardson is advancing — expansion of the sales tax to services in exchange for a reduction in property taxes, and auto taxes dressed up as user fees — he is helping to create the apparatus that will enable big spenders to more efficiently and more painlessly function as tax collectors for the welfare state.
The great frustration with the new majority under the Gold Dome is that, with rare exception — tort reform and special education vouchers, for example — they are largely indistinguishable from the Democrats who preceded them. The semantics game on taxes is right out of the Democratic playbook.
A user fee is a sum charged a limited group of people for a specific service government provides for their sole benefit. The best example is fees charged golfers at state parks. Providing courses is of public recreational value to a large segment of Georgians. But most of us aren’t golfers and, therefore, those who play the courses should pay full freight. A fee that covers the full cost of maintenance and operation is warranted. And it’s legit. It’s a user fee, not a tax.
A trauma network, though, does not serve a select population — or at least not one that can be identified in advance. It can serve motorists, certainly. But it serves, too, those who fall off ladders, or suffer gunshots, stabbings, heart attacks or other traumas. A genuine user fee would be an emergency room add-on. But since the cost would likely be prohibitive, a user fee is not practical.
The consideration, then, is whether the service is so essential to the general welfare of the state that the cost should be borne by all taxpayers. That obviously is a decision that has been made — though not fully explained.
The reality is that a statewide trauma network that covers all Georgians will be an expensive proposition. If one person is entitled to trauma center access within a reasonable distance, all are.
If all Georgians benefit, all Georgians should pay. That’s a tax.
It’s absurd to consider eliminating ad valorem taxes on vehicles while in the very same session proposing to add back a $10 tax to fund the trauma network. That’s not reform. It’s tax shifting. And if politicians can justify $10 for trauma, they can justify any other sum for any other appealing cause.
What this majority really needs to do is develop an agenda based on the state’s transportation, education, medical and water objectives — and then determine priorities and funding requirements. If a tax increase is warranted — and it may be — Perdue, Richardson and Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle should make the case, and explain to Georgians what we’re getting and why the additional money is needed.
Instead, we get tax shifts and new tax targets and tax semantics.
Eliminating the property tax altogether never really had that much appeal here. Property is a form of wealth and, besides, rich Saudis shouldn’t be encouraged to buy land and sit on it for decades while it appreciates with no obligation to support local communities. But if not eliminated altogether, it’ll be back creeping higher and higher.
Creating a tax on services is a monumental step in tax policy. It opens a new vista to those who would grow government. Penny here, penny there, painlessly. No thanks.
Tell me what I’m buying and what it costs. Then levy the taxes, straight-up.
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Hillary can’t beat Oprah
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Barack Obama may have The Bomb. And it’s not aboard the Enola Gay. It’s now aboard the Obama Express campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination. Suddenly Hillary’s not looking invincible.
The secret weapon is, of course, Oprah, the nationally adored talk-show host. She attracted a crowd estimated at almost 30,000 Sunday in Columbia, S.C., after campaigning with him Saturday in Iowa. “There are those who say it’s not his time, that he should wait his turn,” she told the crowd in Columbia. “Think about where you’d be in your life if you’d waited when people told you to.”
She added, too, a line that could build some fire under his campaign and attract disgruntled Independents, and perhaps even some Republican women: “I’m sick of politics as usual.” Much of the nation is. But it’s quite a feat to get from that declaration to mobilizing the turned-off segment and delivering them to a specific candidate. But I’m not one to underestimate Oprah. Clinton and Obama are neck-and-neck in Iowa, and she’s up in the 5-10 percentage point range in New Hampshire and South Carolina. That’s within the Oprah impact zone.
The nomination’s still Hillary’s to lose. She can beat Obama. But she can’t beat Oprah.
