Posted on 04/05/2010 12:49:59 PM PDT by Presto
Well half the electorate like their freebies from the government so their congressmen would never vote for this.
The other half (property owners for the most part) that pay the bills would be in favor of the amendment ... and consistently vote to limit govt and taxation.
I do not disagree in principle with the philosophy of your point. I believe in encouraging private sector charity to handle the needs of the suffering.
But realize that the catastrophe/strain exception in the 28th Amendment does not _require_ the Congress to issue deductions, exemptions, or credits in cases such that a State is experiencing catastrophe/strain. - It merely allows Congress the option.
If we remove that clause, Congress still has options - they’re just more expensive. Congress could still pass a bill appropriating funds to pump hundreds of billions in emergency relief to a strained State (a la Louisiana after Katrina). But as we know, anytime the Fed hands out money, it does so with great inefficiency. It’s much better to allow Congress to provide tax exemptions to States that have catastrophes than to ‘triple count’ tax dollars by handing them from citizens to their States to the Federal Government back to a State in crisis. Just in the process of the Fed counting the tax dollars it collects, money gets wasted.
We don’t want to put a cap on how high government can raise taxes because sometimes it is necessary for us to fight wars or deal with financial melt-downs.
The ‘State governments hawking after Federal Government hawking after State governments’ mechanism that the 28th Amendment establishes will keep Federal taxes low by virtue of the competitive and transparent interactions between the two.
But since the 17th Amendment, they have no direct vote on the matter.
The Feds can and have put in a 90+% tax rate before - just not on everybody.
It will be much easier for the Feds to put a 90% tax bite on the states. All they have to do is take over 90% of the function of the states in exchange.
Look how Medicare is going. It's taking a large and growing chunk of every states income. At some point, the Feds just step in and say we're taking Medicare over completely and the states must now fork over another 25% of their revenue. The cycle is: Increase the mandated spending on area X for the state until it's unendurable, take area X over in exchange for another chunk of state revenue
This can happen with education, just with a slow expansion of the NCLB mandates. Any government function can be transferred from state to federal responsibility this way, as long as you don't recognized Constitutional limits on Federal authority.
And given enough money to pay off a few states here and there, there would not be a united front of 50 governors fighting this.
Probably too late, but the dollar should be re-valued 1 for 10 or 1 for ? Then all coinage sdould be gold, silver or copper and possibly nickel. Won’t be painless but if 2-3 other nations do something like this first the U.S. will be in a pickle,,,this would devistate the dollar and the ecconmy. We can’t afford to be also-ran in this area. Think about it.
The problem is not the Constitution, except for a few self-inflicted wounds like the 16th, 17th and 26th Amendmends.
The problem is the universities, the media, the bureaucracy and an ensconced dependent class who are going to have to be burned out because they can’t be voted out.
There has never been a 91% tax on all American earners. That is simply untrue.
Where you say that a 90% tax on State revenue does not mean a 90% tax on individuals is to somehow miss the point of the 28th Amendment. It is the individual citizen who pays taxes to his State (and ONLY to his State). It will not exactly be a secret when the Congress proposes to raise the State Tax Rate who is going to ultimately end up paying for the increase. Governors might be helpful pointing this out (screaming from the top of their lungs) to their citizens - because the State power they get to govern will be greatly diminished by the tax increase. - To the tune of billions upon billions of dollars. You say State governments will go along with this for the typical Federal dole out? No they won’t. What can a Congressman legally give to a Governor such that the Governor will say, “Yeah, go ahead take money billions of dollars of power out of the State I am running.”? The whole point of Federal deficit spending is that the Fed Gov spends BIG money it does not have. Whatever pork a Congressman brings back to the State: A)is less than what the State pays to fund the pork of the other States; and B)is not something the Governor gets to control or take credit for. You’re the one dreaming if you think Governors will give up billions of dollars of State power in exchange for a pittance of pork that they will have no say in the administration of. You’re in a deep sleep if you think the average citizen will be happy to hear that billions of dollars is leaving his State to fund the pork in other States. That’s money that could have been used to pay for his kids’ schools or to pay police salaries or to fix one of the pot holes he drives over every day. The whole point of the 28th Amendment is that it establishes an inescapable system that starkly exposes these discrepancies because State governments lose BIG MONEY POWER in the face of such discrepancies. Citizens of a State will never stand for it, and their Congressional representatives will never be able to hold office based on it.
Maybe, but probably not. Had there been a limit in the 16th Amendment, it would have meant that the Progressives weren't that strong, or the anti-Progressives not that gullible.
I just think that we would have had a slower progression, had the conservatives been a bit more conservative in their grant of new taxing power.
You discount the 97 years since.
Slowhandluke,
Under the proposed 28th Amendment, ALL tax pasture in a State will be the exclusive province of that State’s government. All State governments are far more sensitive and responsive to their voters than is the Federal Government to its voters because it is obviously easier to effect change at the State level than at the Federal level.
Obviously, it will be much harder for the Fed Gov to raise taxes on the COLLECTION of the 50 State governments because State governments are organized and directly invested in spending HUGE amounts of money to manage the affairs of their States. When they have to give up billions of dollars to the Fed to fund things like “the study of bovine flatulence in the State of Connecticut” there will be bloody hell to pay. Forty Nine Governors will say hell no! - And their citizens might just agree with them.
Tell me, how could you as a Senator get re-elected in your State if you voted yes on a budget bill that brought back at best a few hundred million dollars in pet pork projects but in exchange you send billions of dollars out of your State? (You are aware this is essentially the deficit spending works, aren’t you??)
The better and simpler answer is to just repeal the 17th Amendment. Then state legislatures would have a say in what they would accept in terms of strings. Right now, states are just local administrators for the federal governmenht with no say in the federal government. Tweaking the flow of funds won’t fix that. I liked post #45 on this.
No damn way!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
You are way, way too hopeful about politicians not being bought off. You don't have to buy them all off, just the last few (Landrieu, Nelson). If the money goes to their state, it takes a goodly amount. If the money goes to their own pocket, not so much. Just look at how many of the folks we send to Washington end up rich. Either their wife becomes a lobbyist, or they get wonderful investment help. The buyouts come in both subtle and crude forms.
This will take some pre-planning. Look at George Soros Secretary-of-State effort. One (or more) of his groups worked to get far leftist folks elected to Secretary of State positions so they could turn a blind eye to ACORN election rigging. They can do the same thing for the Governor slots. There is no natural law requiring governors to be loyal to their own state, or to be honest. Do you thing Governor Blago-whatever could not be bought off?
Medicare and No-Child-Left-Behind are the model on how this is going to work. Raise the mandates to where the states can't pay, and then take over both the program and the funding source.
And when the Federal Rate goes up, the PR story will be that the States just need to tax their rich a little more.
I live in New Jersey. Billions go out of New Jersey and a pittance comes back. Liberals won't yell much if "It's for the Children". H*ll, even at a state level, our RINO governor has decided to keep shoveling money to the failed big city schools and cut money to all the suburban schools. And not enough folks are complaining.
It doesn't matter how little pork comes back, if the pork goes to the governor's friends and supporters. There are some governors who might actually think about the state, but probably not enough.
If you want the states to keep the Feds at arm's length, then just rescind the 17th Amendment, giving the states real power in Washington again.
Regarding post #45, I have to ask Slowhandluke the same thing I asked you: What can the Congress legally give to a State’s Governor such that the Governor is fine with giving up billions upon billions of dollars of State power? “How does a nice three hundred million dollar bridge to nowhere grab ya’? You won’t be in charge of overseeing that, of course. And it’s the Congressional representatives from your State that will get the lions share of the credit for ‘bringing home the bacon’. But surely won’t squawk if the State you’re empowered to govern gives up a few measly billion dollars in exchange for that three hundred million dollar pork project. Right?”
Slowhand,
The point of a 91% rate on all American earners had never been levied and never will was simply to demonstrate that it was even more absurd to think that State governments and their citizens would roll over for such an absurdity. The Congress has the power to raise the tax rate that high under our current system and under the system that would be established by the proposed 28th Amendment. However, despite having the power, Congress cannot raise the tax rate that high under either system because it has not political willpower.
The billions don’t go up in smoke (entirely.) They come back through all kinds of payments to individuals and agencies. Seeing it up to the feds in one bundle will be even easier to justify as a good “investment” when they total up all the payouts to individuals and agencies in the state. It just saves them the trouble of calculating the outflow, which every state gov does anyway. They know the net now. The “return” on the “investment”, of course, will be the ponzied deficit, minus direct federal expenses on overseas defense and foreign aid, just like it’s done now.
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