North Carolina Conservative Agenda

Yesterday was the introduction to the 7-point Conservative Agenda for this year's "short" session of the North Carolina General Assembly. Today I will discuss point 1:

Eliminate so-called Temporary Taxes

Feel free to join in this discussion with me, posting comments that you support or oppose these suggested actions of the General Assembly.

Temporary taxes were imposed in 2001 for a two-year period to meet a downturn in the economy. They were supposed to be part of a package that also cut spending. However, in the past five years tax increases have been passed two more times and spending has increased 20%. Why do we still have temporary taxes?

During the first seven months of the present fiscal year the state has over-taxed citizens by more than $260 million. Most experts predict the-end-of-the-year surplus will be $600 million. Liberals will always find new ways to spend the surplus on “needed” programs. Conservatives should fight to return surplus money to taxpayers.

Unless “temporary taxes” are removed when there is a surplus, they will become permanent.

I'm not sure that I've ever heard of a tax that was actually temporary. Did you realize that the federal income tax was supposed to be "temporary," too? Government are absolutely addicted to spending worse than someone on crack. And yes, since this was a temporary tax, the legislature actually does vote to renew them each and every year.

This is indeed one of the very few years that the state government is running a surplus -- and that's not including the hundreds of million that are supposed to be raised by the lottery -- so it's likely the state will bring in $1 BILLION more than budgeted. That's MY damn money.

Only 23% of people surveyed in North Carolina support spending more money by the government. I oppose ANY new spending by the government on ANY program. This state is so bloated, they'll actually have trouble finding things to spend that spare billion on -- not that they won't do, it will just take some time.

The Democrat-run legislature is unlikely to remove or reduce taxes, certainly not taxes that have been in place for 5 years. I agree that the temporary taxes should be removed, but I don't see much hope of getting that past the Democrats. Let's hope I'm wrong.

Posted by: Ogre at 03:02 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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