You might want to get a tighter grip on your wallet. Here is the headline from Sunday’s front-page story in the Arizona Republic that tells us the chattering classes have decided we need to pay more income tax: “Low taxes: Your gain, Arizona’s pain. Tax policies draw attention during times of budget woes.”
There are two perspectives on Arizona’s current budget crisis. One is that we don’t tax people enough and have shortchanged government, putting our infrastructure and schools at risk. That school of thought exists only in the minds of liberal ideologues and on the pages of the Arizona Republic.
The other perspective — which is usually called “reality” — is that state revenues have expanded dramatically in a short period of time. Arizona went from $6.2 billion in revenue in 2003 to $9.6 billion in 2007 — five years of national economic expansion triggered by President Bush’s tax cuts. When your revenue grows 55 percent in five years, you have to work really hard to spend yourself into a budget crisis – which is exactly what we’ve done. Gov. Napolitano’s constant upward spending pressure has pushed Arizona government spending from $6 billion in 2003 to $11 billion in 2007. We’ve given state government plenty of money for schools and infrastructure. If the job isn’t getting done, it’s not for lack of money.
For proponents of big government, no tax rate is high enough and no amount of money flowing into government coffers is ever enough. So we search this lengthy article for one quote, one voice, one perspective that would argue that our lower income tax rates have contributed to Arizona’s economic expansion, and that the problem isn’t low revenue but overspending and poor priorities.
But we search in vain. And that’s how we know the powers that be have decided we need to raise income taxes on Arizona’s working families.
