CA: Duck! More ballot-box budgeting is on the way

Sac Bee ^ | 3/25/04 | Daniel Weintraub

[NormsRevenge]

For California, 2004 is starting to look like the year of the boutique tax increase. Three measures heading toward the November ballot each seek to secure a relatively narrow slice of income or assets and dedicate it to a favored purpose.

[NormsRevenge]

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[hattend]

One measure would increase taxes on commercial property and plow the money into funding preschools and teacher salaries. Another would hike an existing phone tax and spend the money on health care, mainly in emergency rooms.

And a third, which already has sufficient signatures to qualify for the ballot, would levy a 1 percent income tax surcharge on million-dollar earners to finance a dramatic expansion of the state's mental health care system.

More teacher and hospital taxes that will not reach the people that it's meant to help. Sheesh...and both will pass because they are for the chilrun. Californians are such suckers for (apparent) school funding. (I speak as a former [1955-1998] and future [2007-?] Californian)

[goldstategop]

The Democrats' special interests are trying to lock in their share of the tax pie. The good news is if they get the public to buy it, they'll find they were too clever for their own good. If you fix your share at such and such percent of tax revenue, you can't spend more cause that's the amount allocated to your share. And neither can any one else. As far as ballot box budgeting goes, liberals think protecting boutique spending from spending cuts will leave plenty of room for more spending. They might just discover the Law Of Unintended Consequences comes into play and actually leaves them with the ability to spend less money in the future. Then again Democrats never think that far ahead.