Essay: Chamber Music - 10/12/07
But these days they do. Both organizations deserve a world-class place in the Michigan Hall of Shame for fumbling the ball.
The Democrats blew an attempt to make our Presidential primary one of the most significant in the nation by moving the date ahead of when their own rules said the primary could be. As a result, the candidates refused to come here, most pulled their names off the ballot, and the party said any delegates elected wouldn’t count.
But the chamber managed to do even worse. As you just heard, their membership is hopping mad over the legislature’s decision to extend the sales tax to some services. Even those who dodged the bullet fear – with some reason – that this is just the beginning.
Now that the precedent for taxing services has been set, they reason, the lawmakers will find it easy to come back and tax more of them. They are right about that. But what Tricia Kinley didn’t tell you is that the chamber did this to themselves. They could have prevented this by coming out in favor of a state income tax of 4.6 percent.
Yet in spite of what you heard, they didn’t. They talked about sweeping reforms and restructuring and other nice-sounding language that doesn’t really mean anything without specific proposals. Yes, they want to “reform” things like welfare, by which they mean cut payments to the needy.
But most welfare has been eliminated. The entire Department of Human Services budget could be canceled and they’d still be far short of closing the two billion dollar budget deficit we were facing.
There are far more savings available in prison reform, but the law-and-order Republicans did not want to cut the two billion we spend to lock people up. The state needed new revenues. For several days, Speaker of the House Andy Dillon tried to get bipartisan support for returning the state income tax rate to 4.6 percent. Had the Chamber signaled that was all right, the war would have been over.
In fact, the legislature would now have to slash considerably more than the $435 million it still needs to cut to balance the books.
But the Chamber only moved at the end, when it saw that even some Republicans were going to back a service tax, to keep the state from shutting down.
Then, at nine o clock at night, the chamber said “hey, like, ah … what about a 4.75 percent income tax rate instead.” A week earlier, both parties would have jumped at the idea. But at that point, it was too late.
Now, they want to repeal the service tax. Okay. But as the management books say, “if you have a problem, bring your boss a solution.” In this case, that involves finding $750 million.
And the only way to get that, this year anyway, is taxes. So, Ms Kinley, give us your best shot. And if you can show us a better tax, we will come.
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