I don’t feel an in-depth post coming on, so I’ll just give you some links I found to be of interest:
In an article by Sylvia Smith, the United States House has passed a bill that extends Medicare and expands health care coverage for children. Mike Pence is against it. (Read the rest for details — my knowledge of Medicare and federal coverage is too limited for me to be confident in my summaries.)
Amanda Iacone has an article about Allen County’s preference to have discretion on tax relief distributions at the local level. “Gov. Mitch Daniels has suggested a circuit-breaker approach to doling out the $300 million. That approach would benefit home owners with high-value homes. Beth Garber, the county’s lobbyist, told county officials that the governor’s plan could give the bulk of Allen County’s property tax relief portion to Aboite Township residents and likely no one else.”
The Evansville Courier Press has an editorial on how the federal debt is the Democrats’ problem now. When Bush took office, the national debt was $5.6 trillion and declining. Now, thanks to steep tax cuts and profligate spending, the national debt is $9 trillion and rising.
Greg Goode will seek the Republican nomination to challenge Brad Ellsworth in Indiana’s Eighth Congressional District.
A gunslinging penguin hacked the Delaware County website.
An inmate from Anderson escaped from the Westville Correctional Facility.
The Evansville Courier Press editorial talks about ‘steep tax cuts’ being part of the problem.
Maybe, but I’d like to see them look into tax receipts vs. tax rates over the past twenty or thirty years – I don’t think the relationship there is always as straightforward as you might think.
It’s hard to argue with them about ‘profligate spending’, though – I keep hoping that serious earmark transparency will limp to the finish line in congress, which could help with this – not so much because of the earmark money itself, but because removing the opportunity for bribery and back-scratching on big ticket items would be beneficial.
I don’t think the Clinton tax structure was overly burdensome. I’d say reinstate that tax structure for starters. Second, if we cut the Iraq War out of the budget over the next year or two, that ought to save a few hundred billion. Actually, I think maybe an Iraq War surcharge tax would probably be in order. There is more to supporting the troops than just putting a ribbon on the car and borrowing a ton of cash from the Chinese for your kids and grandkids to pay back.
I could go for the Clinton-era structure if there’s a reasonable expectation that it would raise net revenue – I could even be eager about it if you could convince me that a sense of fiscal responsibility would also overwhelm our legislators.
(The ‘Fair Tax’ is also fun to think about – but I predict it will remain just a thought-experiment in this country, at least).
I’d still like to get our congress folk out of the earmarking business – is there much similar activity at the state level, do you know?
There was something like earmarking on the State level in the form of the Build Indiana Fund. It came under investigation in 2001 for various abuses and was suspended. I don’t know if it has been reinstated.
Ostensibly, it was a form of property tax relief. It was funded by lottery and riverboat revenue and legislators were basically given control of how the money was spent for projects in their districts. Supposedly, the money would go for capital projects, thereby reducing the amount in property taxes that would go to those projects.
Hmm. I remember hearing about that, now that you mention it – and thinking it was an invitation to abuse.
I’m ever more convinced that P.J. O’Rourke was right when he said:
At least with the old Build Indiana fund, I could console myself that losing on the Lottery was my altruistic way of rebuilding Indiana’s bridges…
If you want to stop some of the Congressional silliness take the “truth-in-legislation” provision from Indiana’s Constitution and also our provision against special legislation and add it to the federal constitution. Yes, our Indiana Supreme Court has found ways around both provisions but you still got to some relation between a bill’s title and text.