Agree Perry is the best of the lot. What most people don’t know about Medina is she is a Ron Paulite libertarian. One website says she worked in his presidental campaign. She has never been asked about any of that, hasn’t been asked what her opinion is on war, abortion, making drugs legal in TX and basically she was just given a pass on any tough questions in the debates. All she does is talk about the “constitution” to get the lemmings.
The elites want her to take votes from Perry so Hutchison can be their “go to” girl with her liberal ways.
C’mon you people spreading disinformation about Medina. Her position on the elimination of property taxes is very clear and very simple, especially if you take the time to look at the specifics on her website and even more so if you read through the study she references from her website.
If we eliminate the property tax and DON’T broaden the current sales tax (at all) to include purchases of goods and services not currently taxed then it is true that the current sales tax rate would have to go up some in order to maintain current revenue levels to the state. Furthermore, Debra is correct in asserting that ultimately it would be up to the state legislature to determine the specifics of how much the current sales taxes would be broadened.
Her preferences on the issues, and what she would be using the bully pulpit of the governorship to encourage all the Republicans in the state legislature to approve can be found right on her campaign website.
I’ve summarized Debra’s proposals below:
If we eliminate the property tax and broaden the current sales tax to include most of the goods and services currently taxed in other states - plus currently untaxed purchases like initial real estate purchases - then we could actually have NO PROPERTY TAXES AND A SALES/CONSUMPTION TAX AT ESSENTIALLY THE SAME RATE WE HAVE NOW OR EVEN LOWER THAN WE HAVE NOW WITHOUT SEEING A DECREASE IN REVENUES TO THE STATE.
To give you a sense of what kinds of numbers we’re talking about... according to the Texas Public Policy Foundation study that she cites just adding in a one-time sales tax on the sale of property by itself (as opposed to maintaining the current annual tax on property ownership)... would only necessitate raising the current sales tax rate from 8.25% to 8.8% in order to maintain current revenue levels to the state after the elimination of the property taxes.
In reality, as Governor of Texas Debra Medina would (assuming she could get the Republicans in the state legislature to go along with her of course) call for decreases in state spending and as broad a base of goods and services to be taxed under the new sales (or consumption if you rather) tax, which means we could have under a Medina government no property taxes at all AND a lower sales tax rate than we have now at the same time.
http://www.medinafortexas.com/propertyTax.php
http://www.texaspolicy.com/pdf/2009-04-taxswap-laffer-posting.pdf
I encourage everyone to read through the TPPF report linked above.