Our View: The question seems almost impossible to answer. To help fix the state’s budget, would you prefer to raises taxes precisely when everyone already is being hurt financially by a national recession — or would you borrow heavily against future gambling returns and tobacco settlement payments and just pray that you won’t have to raise taxes later to pay for the programs that those revenues now fund?
The question seems almost impossible to answer.
To help fix the state’s budget, would you prefer to raises taxes precisely when everyone already is being hurt financially by a national recession — or would you borrow heavily against future gambling returns and tobacco settlement payments and just pray that you won’t have to raise taxes later to pay for the programs that those revenues now fund?
What does seem clear is Arizona will use one or both options to remove a predicted $3 billion deficit for a $9.2 billion General Fund budget. Lawmakers are simply unwilling to consider methods to reduce state spending by that much because of the political pain such cuts would invite.
The choice between taxes and debt has dramatically split Republican officials who control the state budgeting process. Gov. Jan Brewer has said she opposes piling up more debt that would burden future taxpayers. Borrow too much now, and there’s no way to fund a broad-based tax cut for businesses that Brewer would like to see go into effect in 2012.
So Brewer repeated her commitment to $1 billion in temporary tax increases while speaking Wednesday to more than 200 East Valley business leaders at Mesa Community College. But Brewer didn’t mention her opposition to debt as she had in earlier speeches.
Perhaps that’s because Republican budget writers in the Legislature are going to unveil a plan as soon as Monday that does a lot of borrowing. Rep. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills and chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, says borrowing is a “lesser evil” during a recession, and the state can manage to wipe out the deficit without a tax increase.
More than a “last resort,” the state should consider higher taxes only in response to a catastrophe beyond anyone’s control. But the state got into the present mess in large part because it spent far more in recent years than it could sustain in the long run.
Voters are to blame as much as lawmakers, and the public should be invited to help support a solution through a special election.
But lawmakers definitely should again consider what spending is vital to a future of robust economic freedom, and what programs simply fulfill some special interest group’s wants and desires while violating the public’s expectation for a limited government.
