This fall, Georgians can choose from not only a Republican governor who says he won’t raise taxes, but a Democratic challenger who promises the same.
There was a stir this past week when a video surfaced depicting state Sen. Jason Carter saying he “would not ask the people of Georgia to pay more in state taxes, right now.” Republicans pounced on those last two words, suggesting Carter was hinting at an expiration date for his no-new-taxes pledge.
But it turns out the senator, during his remarks at the Georgia School Board Association’s conference in Savannah, said everything but “read my lips”:
“(Y)ou cannot go to the people and say that (they) should pay more taxes. And I wouldn’t (ask them) because they can’t trust the politicians to do what they say their going to do with their money. That’s just a fact.
“So the answer for how we live within our means and still support education in ways that make sense is priorities. … Yes, there will be difficult budgeting decisions. … Yes, we will have to make ends meet, and yes there will be tough choices. …
“And we will not have to raise taxes to (fund education properly). We will make tough budgeting decisions, but instead of … skimping on the mortgage and gas and food that we have to have for our families, we’ll not take the vacations.”
This is all rather different from what we’ve heard from Carter’s fellow Democrats over the past few years.
If you’ve spent much time at the Gold Dome since the Great Recession, you’ve heard many a Democrat argue the state went beyond cutting mere fat from the budget. We’d cut to the bone; through the bone; into the muscle.
I never heard anything about damage to ligaments, cartilage or major organs, but maybe I missed it.
But it turns out those “bone-deep cuts” were really just missed vacations. Or was there still some vacation-esque spending in the budget even after those cuts?
To hear Carter tell it, when state budget writers added some $200 million in non-k-12 spending for the coming 12 months, they were just padding the ol’ beach-bum fund. That, plus another half-billion or so they apparently should have shifted into classrooms from … well … not Medicaid, which Carter wants to expand; not transportation, which the state legally cannot chop significantly; not higher education, which has seen cuts Carter has also criticized; not early childhood education, where Carter wants to spend more money.
Presumably, Carter means the money could have come from somewhere in the other one-third of the state's budget without "hav(ing) to raise taxes."
That half-billion would have taken next year’s spending on the other third of the budget below the level of two fiscal years ago, one of those times a Carter colleague (Senate Minority Leader Steve Henson) used the “bone-deep cuts” line.
Of course, had $1 billion already been taken out that year, it really would have looked more like 2010. Of course, had $1 billion already been taken out that year …
Well, let’s just assume our liberal friends who back then complained about those spending levels, and backed what Henson called the need to take a more “balanced approach” to state finances by raising revenues, would instead embrace what Carter’s selling.
Right now.
