“All I care about is making the Michigan Chamber of Commerce and rich people who don’t want to pay more taxes happy. I want them to donate to my campaign when I run for governor.”
He won’t say that, of course. But that is the only logical interpretation of the irresponsible behavior he has shown in the present budget crisis. The only other explanation is that he is not intellectually capable of understanding what’s going on.
Bill Rustem, the president and CEO of Public Sector Consultants, puts a slightly more charitable spin on what’s happening. “You’ve got an inexperienced legislature looking for a tax that nobody will object to. And there’s no such thing. The only tax that people like is when you tax the other guy."
Well, the legislators campaigned for these jobs knowing there were hard decisions to be made. And this is the time to make them.
Our lawmakers aren’t being paid $80,000 a year to smile and wave.
Nor can they make the excuse of inexperience. We’ve had a structural financial crisis in this state for at least five years.
Every year, our fatally flawed state budget process results in a billion-dollar deficit. We’ve known about the present approaching train wreck since Memorial Day, when the legislature shoved most of last year’s crisis into this year, doubling the problem.
Yet with barely twenty-three days to go before potential disaster, our lawmakers continue to refuse to step up and do their jobs. Mike Bishop’s floating a proposal to boost the sales tax is proof of that. Even talking about it is absolutely ridiculous at this point.
Why? Because it has no bearing at all on the immediate problem, except as a clever distraction. Raising the sales tax is probably a bad idea for a number of reasons, ranging from the fact that is punishes the poor to that it will lead people to buy cars in Ohio. But even if it were brilliant it makes no sense to discuss it now, because our lawmakers are legally required to find a way to eliminate the current deficit first. They know what they have to do.
First, raise the state income tax half a percent to where it was in 1995. That’s a tax increase most of us will barely notice. If you make a thousand dollars a week, we are talking less than five dollars.
Then, they have to show a little creativity and backbone and figure out what else we need to do to make sure Michigan can continue to provide its businesses and citizens with decent services, infrastructure and education. Doing that doesn’t take rocket scientists. It does, however, take grownups.
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