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Gordon
“The only difference
between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.”
— Mark Twain
State Senator Jeffrey Gordon’s Senate Bill SB128 should
generate some interest in Connecticut among state politicians who have said
repeatedly they are interested in positioning Connecticut as a business
generator in New England.
Among politicians interested in repositioning Connecticut so
that in the post-COVID era the state will be friendlier to businesses, as well
as taxpayers whose own household budgets have been depleted and stressed by a
raging recession, is Governor Ned Lamont.
Following the recently concluded off-presidential-year
elections, Lamont pledged to reduce taxes and maintain what he calls “guardrails”
erected with the help of GOP leaders a few years back when the State House was
nearly evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. A bipartisan House had
put caps on the state budget that in the future now upon us would prevent a
spendthrift legislature from using state surpluses to increase long term spending.
The guardrails were a welcomed acknowledgement that
increases in spending always lead, when surpluses are
spent down, to higher debt and higher taxes. Part of Connecticut’s obscene
surplus, about $4 billion, is due to transfers from a tax bloated federal government
whose spending in the last two years has been highly inflationary.
As always, Massachusetts is several steps ahead of
Connecticut.
Section 3 of the General Laws of Massachusetts, which sets parameters for
state surpluses, reads: “Limitation on
growth of allowable state tax revenues. Except as otherwise specifically
provided herein, the governor and the general court in exercising their
respective constitutional and statutory duties shall endeavor in each fiscal
year to establish and approve a budget for the Commonwealth and set rates of
taxation for the citizens of the Commonwealth such that net state tax revenues for said
fiscal year shall not exceed allowable state tax revenues for said fiscal year
(emphasis mine).”
The law respecting taxpayer refunds, Chapter 62F, enacted by voters in
1986, sends to the citizens of Massachusetts and businesses, both in and out of
the state, the following clarion message: The state of Massachusetts recognizes
the elementary connection between getting and spending. The more tax money the
state receives, the more tax money money the state has at its disposal to
spend, and spending without borders creates, in the long run and by a
circuitous route, a prosperity deficit in the general community.
The state of Massachusetts also recognizes that state
surpluses represent a total amount of unnecessary taxation, and Boston is,
after all, the town that tossed tea in a harbor because Sam Adams realized that
the tax on tea was an unnecessary and punitive act by a royal authority that had
deprived Americans across the pond of their God given rights as British
subjects to pursue “happiness,” understood by Adams and others in the 18th
century as the right to hold, own and dispose of personal property.
The phrase “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of
Independence probably came to Jefferson by way of John Locke who in 1690 wrote
in one of his essays, "The necessity of pursuing happiness is the
foundation of liberty."
Jefferson drew upon the Virginia Declaration of Rights when
he penned the Declaration of Independence: The Virginia Declaration reads:
“That all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain
inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they
cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the
enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing
property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.”
Taxation, when it is unnecessary, is a theft of property.
Inflation is a hidden tax, all the more insidious for being hidden. The chief
purpose of government is to secure the safety, liberty and general well-being
of the citizenry – not the convenience of politicians who are sworn to secure
property rights.
Gordon’s Senate Bill SB128 is a necessary guardrail that
will, if passed, trim the unsettling appetite for reckless spending in
Connecticut, secure for the citizenry their imprescriptible rights to enjoy and
dispose of their own property as best suits them, make Connecticut once again a
safe space for business opportunity, and give the state an advantage over other
Northeastern states that have thwarted the benefits of a free market
unencumbered by unnecessary taxes and job killing regulations.
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