Posted on 01/13/2012 10:49:28 AM PST by 92nina
Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley has proposed a one-cent increase in the state’s sales tax in order to close the $1.1 billion deficit facing the state along with a bevy of other tax increases. He signed legislation in 2008 increasing the state’s sales tax to six percent; his latest proposal would increase the tax to seven percent.
Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D-Calvert) has said he is not in favor of increasing the sales tax. Instead, he said he favors increasing the state’s gas tax by 5 to 15 cents per gallon. (At 25 years as president of the Maryland Senate, President Miller may have led the charge on more tax increases than any other legislator in Maryland history.)
Not to be outdone by Senator Miller nixing a 1-percent sales tax increase in favor of a 5-cent gas tax increase, Governor O’Malley demanded that the state double its $30 “flush tax” on septic systems. "If we continue to pave over the land, by slapping up giant septic housing developments, we're going to undermine progress” Maryland has made in fighting other sources of pollution, O’Malley said, such as cow manure runoff.
Adding to the debate’s chorus of sober voices, Sue Esty of ASCME chimed in with her opinion on closing the budget shortfall: "Tax the millionaires and tax the corporations that aren't paying one penny in taxes.”
The creativity displayed by Maryland Democrats in coming up with new ways to hike taxes is almost as impressive as their creativity in coming up with new ways to spend money they don’t have
Read more: http://atr.org/maryland-gas-tax-flush-higher-sales-a6683#ixzz1jMfkdJLy
Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at Digg and ay Reddit and in Stumbleupon and Delicious
WMAL radio had the Maryland Comptroller on this morning. He said that the government needs to just stop spending more money than it takes in for a couple of years. Neither increasing nor decreasing taxes, but looking at spending. He also stated that everytime the state has increased taxes, especially targeted taxes, the total receipts decrease instead of increasing. He said, more people and businesses are moving out of the states to avoid these “targeted” tax increases.
The amazing thing, is that the comptroller is a Democrat. I think this was on the Chris Plante show.
While in theory this is good for Virginia, in that it will induce businesses to relocate south of the Potomac, it also results in Marylanders moving to VA and then voting Democrat so that the same policies that lead them to leave Maryland can be put into place here.
Mike Miller and O’Mally are cut fromthe same Democrat cloth.
We haven’t really had a Comptroller since Louie Goldstein died.
He was a real Comptroller.
O’Malley has take the Highway funds and tossed them down the General fund toilet. That is why the roas are in such a sorry state. He has taken all of the different funds and blown the money Ehrlich had a surplus now we are a Billion dollars in the hole.
That doesn’t count the money from the federal bailout O’Malley took and blew.
And yet just like the National elections Democrats will still vote for the CS.
Welcome to the club. For years, Ga, Al, and FL have been complaining about yankees fouling their nests in states like MA, NJ, and NY and then moving to the south where the economic climate was far better, only to begin sh!tting where they eat again.
I can't wait to get the hell out of this state.
This is (literally) the money-quote: “The creativity displayed by Maryland Democrats in coming up with new ways to hike taxes is almost as impressive as their creativity in coming up with new ways to spend money they don’t have.”
Flush tax: if its yellow let it mellow, if its brown flush it down.
What you type is sadly true. All these Democrats leave their disaster zone, move somewhere better, never realizing along the way that the policies they support cause the problems.
I was amazed just to hear “no tax increase” from the mouth of an elected Maryland Democrat.
I believe that the transfer of the gas tax increase to “fix the roads” was funneled into the general fun within a year or two of its passing a decade or two ago, during Ehrlich’s predecessor.
Not everyone from these states are Dems/Libs. Outside the D.C. to Baltimore corridor there a good many conservatives. A few counties (Harford and Carroll, among others) are very Republican. We’re just overwhelmed by the tons of government workers, pointy-headed academics and the welfare hordes who infest the metroplex.
As soon as I can sell my house at a decent price, I’m bringing my guns and money down there with ya’ll. And I’ll mind my own business.
Make a hole.
Great to hear, always welcome in Va.
Speaking of Virginia, the A-holes in Md. raised the toll on the Potomac River Bridge so I would have to pay more to go across the Bridge and save a couple of bucks.
Sorry to hear about that. I’m wondering if there’s a list/index of tolls on bridges,/highways in the northeast corridor. At the rate of these increases, people are going to have to make their own fewer-tolls routes.
Where I live it would increase my drive by 50 miles to go around.
Considering that the alternative of a small increase in the gasoline tax is (essentially) requiring everyone to drive around with transponders in their car and pay 15 cents per mile to drive on what would otherwise be a freeway, I don’t really have a problem with the governor in MD.
Here in Texas, our governor has essentially let the gasoline tax lapse, so we are building toll roads like mad and they ALL want transponders.
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