Having said "It will be difficult to get it all done this year" – “it” being a $18 billion boost in taxes to pay for a universal health insurance plan – President Pro Tem of the state senate Mr. Donald Williams gave us a peek into the future when Democrats recently unfurled their battle standard, a budget, heavily progressivized, that punishes smokers, many of whom tend to be poor, and the Democrat’s version of a “millionaire,” anyone earning more than $200,000 a year, while it rewards those in lower income brackets and people living in whatever towns Democrats have chosen to lard with benefices.
When the state income tax was but a gleam in Lowell Weicker’s eye, then governor Weicker was faced with a difficulty in passing the tax through a legislature more evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats than the present arrangement. So the boys and gals wrote a cap on spending into the tax plan, lately busted by Governor Jodi “I am willing to negotiate” Rell, and produced a nearly flat income tax. The semi-progressive income tax had always disturbed Democrats, and now that they have achieved a veto-proof majority in the legislature, they have pounced on a weak ideologically compromised governor.
If Rell did not object to a cap busting increase in educational funding, what principle could she legitimately put forward to serve as a firewall against Democrat pretensions that the additional marginal rates they wish to add to the tax structure brings “fairness” to budget collections?
Actually, it brings divisive politics to budget allocations and opens the tap to further spending. Once you have decided to rob rich Peter to pay poor Paul, you will increase proportionally Paul’s tendency to consume Peter’s wages. In a democracy, those who have less will always want more in services – when they find they do not have to pay for them. When the founders of the nation wrote about the tyranny of the majority in democracies, they had in mind, among other things, the ability of the majority to vote money out of the wallets of a minority.
The real danger in a steeply progressive tax is that the majority that consumes services is able to expand its appetite without paying a penalty for over consumption. Of course, those who foot the bills an improvident legislature puts before them can always move to other less predatory states, and rankings provided by the Yankee Institute showing Connecticut 47th in population growth, 41st in real personal-income growth, and dead last in job creation throughout the recession in the early 90’s indicate that the exodus has begun.
The Democrat spending and allocation plan is a John DeStefano budget administered by a governor who defeated DeStefano in the late gubernatorial campaign and fashioned by a veto-proof legislature that has just checkmated Mrs. Rell
When the state income tax was but a gleam in Lowell Weicker’s eye, then governor Weicker was faced with a difficulty in passing the tax through a legislature more evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats than the present arrangement. So the boys and gals wrote a cap on spending into the tax plan, lately busted by Governor Jodi “I am willing to negotiate” Rell, and produced a nearly flat income tax. The semi-progressive income tax had always disturbed Democrats, and now that they have achieved a veto-proof majority in the legislature, they have pounced on a weak ideologically compromised governor.
If Rell did not object to a cap busting increase in educational funding, what principle could she legitimately put forward to serve as a firewall against Democrat pretensions that the additional marginal rates they wish to add to the tax structure brings “fairness” to budget collections?
Actually, it brings divisive politics to budget allocations and opens the tap to further spending. Once you have decided to rob rich Peter to pay poor Paul, you will increase proportionally Paul’s tendency to consume Peter’s wages. In a democracy, those who have less will always want more in services – when they find they do not have to pay for them. When the founders of the nation wrote about the tyranny of the majority in democracies, they had in mind, among other things, the ability of the majority to vote money out of the wallets of a minority.
The real danger in a steeply progressive tax is that the majority that consumes services is able to expand its appetite without paying a penalty for over consumption. Of course, those who foot the bills an improvident legislature puts before them can always move to other less predatory states, and rankings provided by the Yankee Institute showing Connecticut 47th in population growth, 41st in real personal-income growth, and dead last in job creation throughout the recession in the early 90’s indicate that the exodus has begun.
The Democrat spending and allocation plan is a John DeStefano budget administered by a governor who defeated DeStefano in the late gubernatorial campaign and fashioned by a veto-proof legislature that has just checkmated Mrs. Rell
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