So Illinois’ lame duck state legislature passed two very interesting pieces of law before they left for good. The first was a rather large tax increase and the second was the abolishing of the death penalty in the state. Neither of those laws has actually been made into law since they still need to the be signed by the governor, but still pretty big deals.
Which one is more important you ask? Well I think for your average Chicago citizen it’s probably the tax hike. The reason the legislature did it: because like most states right now Illinois doesn’t have enough money to cover it’s spending. To be fair there are really only two options to take when there is a budget shortfall: raise taxes or cut spending. However, they are both double edge swords during economic hard times.
Raising taxes sounds like a good fix because you’re covering you current spending with money from the citizens that you are spending that money on. Except for the following issues. Firstly your taxes are only on those people who are making money and during an economic recession that number is decreasing. Hence when you raise taxes you get diminished returns because as people lose their jobs they aren’t paying taxes. Secondly you are taxing companies more heavily by increasing the income tax. Companies are having a hard enough time as it is AND you just added extra taxes they have to pay the government (If you didn’t know, every dollar you get taxed on your paycheck is basically also paid to the government by your employer. So anytime they raise taxes on you, they also raise taxes on the people you work for). Thirdly the tax money isn’t going to cover programs that are being used by the people who are working: those people have health insurance, cars, places to live, and food to eat already. The taxes are being used on people who aren’t paying taxes. Ultimately raising taxes garners you less money than you wanted or needed, only helps to prolong the economic downturn, and pisses off the people you are taxing since they aren’t seeing any direct benefits.
So why not cut spending then? Well, you ever take a bone away from a starving dog? It’s not pretty for anyone. Most of the programs that are being supported are in-essence good programs, potentially unnecessary but often enough they make differences in people’s lives. Plus there are people who work for those programs and who champion them as well and cutting spending to those programs really pisses those people off. What typically ends up happening is one of two equally bad scenarios. The first is that in order to avoid destroying any one program completely, funding is cut from everywhere. The problem usually occurs in that it’s tough to cut funding from a lot of programs because they’re already being run of show string budgets. The second situation is that people are too tied to a social program and a very necessary program instead gets cut. Like in Baton Rouge where they are talking about cutting Bus service down, but leaving other massively less important government programs untouched.
So sounds like a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation right? Well it is. And the people who put us there: Liberals. Or better put Socialist. You see non-Socialist don’t support government social programs in the first place. So they don’t get into the system in the first place and when the economic downturn hits you just look at your constituency and say “Look we either raise taxes or we no-longer have roads, so we’re raising taxes”. Government keeps itself from becoming a bloated monster that’s damn near impossible to kill without hurting millions.
But unfortunately the socialist have long since won out and government social programs are the way things are. So what can be done? Well the current method seems to be sit on our hands and wait until the next generation deals with the problem. Personally I’m in favor of shaving everything down to the bare minimum, but it will be unlikely that a politician will do that since they’d never get re-elected trying it.
So on to the conspiracy part of this rant. Now I’m not saying there is a conspiracy going on here, BUT I find this string of facts very interesting. 1. The first thing the Republicans were going to do in the House was to attempt to repeal the Health Care Overhaul Bill. 2. The shootings in Arizona occurred. 3. The House of Representatives delays it’s intended business 4. Obama’s speech about Talking in a Way that Heals 5. There is no news about plans for the repeal of the bill.
I’m not saying it is a conspiracy, but I’m saying it’s interesting. And I also hope they fry the guy who performed the shooting, and they can, because they aren’t in Illinois.
