Dear Neighbor,
You would think control of the House, Senate and the governor’s office would have Democrats sailing through the budget process in St. Paul, but their approach has been anything but cohesive.
In fact, there seems to be more disarray, more disjointedness in their budget process than other years when there was split power in St. Paul. House Democrats do not agree with Senate Democrats and the Democrat governor disagrees with both.
The governor proposed raising taxes on everything from haircuts to clothing, only to abandon those plans after receiving heavy statewide criticism. Now, Senate Democrats put those taxes back on the table when they unveiled their own budget plan. Meantime, the House wants to raise taxes on alcohol, a proposal the Senate has not announced.
Here is where Democrats do agree: They are working to raise taxes on hardworking Minnesotans in order to fund more wasteful government spending. The only questions are over which taxes they want to increase, by how much, and how high to increase state spending.
House Democrats provided details of their plan to raise our taxes by $2.6 billion this week, along with hundreds of millions in fee increases. That is somewhere around $3 billion pulled from citizens to erase a projected shortfall that is $627 million and shrinking by the day. The rest is for more government spending.
Democrats spent all last fall talking about taxing the “rich” to solidify our budget, but many new taxes they propose would hit hard-working taxpayers of all income levels. They want to raise cigarette taxes (by 133 percent) alcohol taxes (103 percent), while eliminating the charitable contribution deduction.
Our economy is growing. We can balance the budget and have increased revenue by cutting out the wasteful spending Democrats are proposing. The Pioneer Press recently published an editorial saying the state should, “take what's coming, say that's enough, and then focus on productivity.” I agree and so do the hardworking taxpayers who are contacting me.
This year, April 18 was the day when our nation’s workers have collectively earned enough money to pay this year’s tax bill. In other words, hardworking Americans will spend 108 days on the clock for federal, state and local governments this year.
Minnesotans will spend one week longer than that national average working to pay for government spending. We will not reach Tax Freedom Day until April 23.
Only six states take longer to pay for government spending than Minnesota. We are just one day quicker than sixth-place California. Imagine how low we would rank if Dayton and Democrats in the Legislature raise our taxes by billions more!
Sincerely,
Tom