Where’s The Budget?
You just can’t satisfy those Dems. For years, they said “If we only got a majority vote on the budget, it would solve all the fiscal problems of the state.” I actually agreed with them. In tough budget years, the only way they could get a tax increase was because, in order to have a budget, some Republicans had to vote for it. Once they voted for the budget, which some felt compelled to do, voting for the taxes included in that budget was easy. Republican activists would beat them up for voting for a budget that “included” tax increases (even though a trailer bill would be necessary to actually enact the taxes), and Democrats would accuse them (rightly) of being hypocrites if they didn’t vote for the taxes. The pressure of being “responsible” (meaning the state had to have a budget), and the political hit for voting for the budget with taxes, made it easy to actually enact the taxes once the budget was passed.
That pressure is gone now. It will not be that big a deal in budget surplus years. The Dems will spend like drunken sailors in those days. But we are not there now. In tough years, Dems will have… Read More