Another tax break bites the dust

Here in Georgia during this year's legislative session the Republicans are trying hard to cut some of the taxes we pay. The Democrats have managed to stop one bill in its tracks.

Georgia House Democrats slammed the brakes on a Republican effort to eliminate the state's car tax and cap property taxes, arguing it would harm schools and local governments.

The constitutional amendment fell just 10 votes short of the 120-vote, two-thirds majority needed.

It would have eliminated the ad valoreum tax we pay on getting our tags every year. The Dems trotted out their tried and true argument about the kids. Well actually they cited evidence, none of it substantiated by facts mind you, that schools would be hurt.

But House Democrats argued that they could support killing the car tax. They angrily accused the GOP, which has slashed the state formula funding for schools, of trying to ram through a tax cut that ripped a $672 million hole in the state budget without any plan to replace the lost revenue while also tying the hands of local governments and school boards.

In truth the original bill had proposals to raise taxes on other items and services to make up most of the cut. The new taxes were more along the lines of consumption taxes. Fair Tax anyone?

In addition to the tax on tags the Republicans have also tried to ease the property tax burden with very limited success.

The tax plan that failed on Wednesday was watered down dramatically from Richardson's initial proposal, which would have wiped out almost every property tax in Georgia.

Gov. Sonny Perdue's plan to eliminate the state portion of property taxes - worth about $30 a household - has passed the state Senate but not the House. His proposal to cut taxes on retirement income for upper income retirees is also in limbo.

If the measure had been approved in the house it would have then gone on the ballot in November for the voters to vote on, and we all know you can't have the great unwashed public masses having any say on repealing taxes, since we all know how that would turn out.

Now stop me if you have heard this argument before. This is from the New York Times of the South aka The Atlanta Journal Consitution (AJC)

Instead, Richardson's proposals would disproportionately benefit those with high incomes and expensive homes. Low- to middle-income Georgians already pay a higher percentage of their income in state and local taxes. Swapping property taxes for more sales taxes will only make it worse.

There is plenty more on this subject in the local news but the question is why am I bothering to talk about a local issue on a blog that normally deals with topics with a wider audience looking for this sites' take on world events?

Simple. All politics are local and what the Dems do at this level is exactly the same thing they will do on the bigger stage. There was very little arguments along the lines of making modifications to the proposal rather it was attacked using the liberal tactics of fear and invoking the image of kids and elderly.

How long are Americans going to allow this same line of scare tactics to be used as some sort of sound reasoning to block any sort of legislation aimed at making governments live within their means? If they had proposed some alternatives, or tried to make some sort of concessions and really were concerned about the average taxpayer they could have come up with some, but this is what you get when most of your politicians are lawyers and don't come from a wider spectrum of our society.

On my property tax bill the portion designated as being for schools is almost three times what the state tax is. Our schools get an obscene amount of money from the taxpayers in this state, but the teachers and educators union is so strong here they can literally determine the outcome of elections, which is how we got Sonny Perdue, the first Republican governor since the Civil War, because the Democrat opponent dared to propose cutting money from the education budget.