More Crap From The “New Carolina” Collective

In case you haven’t been following the latest machinations of the big government spin machine in South Carolina, their newest PR offensive is to try and blame our state’s current revenue disaster on several recently-passed “tax cuts.”

Of course this spin ignores the reality that South Carolina lawmakers didn’t actually “cut” your taxes so much as they “shifted” them, preserving an unwritten State House law known as “revenue neutrality,” which holds that our state’s tax policy can never be permitted to slow the growth of state government, period. Under any circumstances.

This spin also ignores the $2 billion, 41% explosion in government growth our “Republican” legislature has foisted on this state over the previous four years.

Not to mention the current government-induced global economic recession/ depression … which we’re guessing may have a little something to do with the situation.

Anyway, our state’s leading leftists don’t want you to hear any of that, because it not only takes away from their argument, but more importantly it takes away from the real agenda lurking just below their clever PR garbage – i.e. more taxes, higher fees, additional regulations, new government bureaucracies and the enhanced interference of central planning in our private sector.

In short, socialism.

But before regurgitating Das Kapital, these “New Bolsheviks” need to warm up to that act with some innocent-sounding obfuscation.

“I suggest to you that we need real tax reform that looks at our entire tax structure,” begins liberal maven Darla Moore in a recent speech to several Upstate Chambers of Commerce.

Well, duh. We’ve already said we agree with you on that one, sweetheart.

Here’s the problem.

“I’m asking our leaders to consider a recommendation, to create an independent tax research entity to review major tax proposals and to inform our policymakers of the consequences of a proposed tax action,” Moore says.

Hold up … isn’t this precisely what South Carolina’s Board of Economic Advisors (BEA) already does?

Sort of … except that our bass-ackwards BEA (in typical big government fashion) only counts what a proposed tax plan would take away from bureaucratic coffers, not what it would bring in.

For whatever reason, BEA chairman John Rainey (a Sanford appointee) and state economist Bill Gillespie refuse to factor in the stimulative effect that tax cuts have on revenue growth, or the “de-stimulative effect” too much government growth can have, for that matter.

But does Mrs. Moore want her little group to address that problem?

Of course not. Instead, it sure sounds to us like she and the BEA Chairman are cooking up a massive tax increase for the people of South Carolina.

“A perfect example is sales tax exemptions,” Moore says. “The chairman of the Board of Economic Advisors and a member of the Palmetto Institute Board is reporting that today … today, that we collect $2.7 billion in sales taxes … and we exempt $2.7 billion from such taxes. I’d suggest most of these exemptions were enacted without any real consideration of how they would affect our overall tax structure.”

Hmmm … let’s plug that quote into our handy-dandy Bureaucrat Translator, which in case you were wondering also works for billionaires who shill for bureaucrats.

Computing … computing … wait, it’s spitting something out now:

We’re stealing $2.7 billion for more government and there’s nothing you poor, uneducated South Carolinians can do about it.

Gee … that approach sure sounds familiar.

In fairness to Moore, we agree wholeheartedly that South Carolina’s current system of sales tax exemptions and gimmicky “tax free holidays” needs to be utterly demolished, burned to the ground and the earth salted on top of it.

But in the event certain sales tax exemptions are ultimately eliminated, that money should be automatically returned to the taxpayers, not re-invested into most dysfunctional, duplicative and duplicitous state government the world has ever seen.

As South Carolina enters what is sure to be an incredibly trying economic period, it is quite frankly past time that our state started implementing common sense, conservative fiscal practices … not more of the same “let’s find more money for government” crap that Darla Moore and her band of super-freaky liberal buddies are endorsing.

In fact, with our neighboring states likely to be raising taxes and fees (or doing away with exemptions) to cover government shortfalls, imagine how many new jobs and new businesses we could attract simply by resisting that temptation?

And imagine how many more new jobs and businesses we could attract by actually cutting business and income taxes?

If we’re going to eliminate exemptions, give that money back to the people.

And hey – if you don’t want to do that, at least take that $2.7 billion and apply it to personal and business income tax relief. That’s “revenue neutral,” right?

But whatever you do … don’t spend it on more government. That’s what we always do in this state, and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s never worked.

Comments

Trackbacks

• Big Bobby, Budget & Bidness :: FITSNews