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Support Taxpayer's Protection Act
Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009
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Recently, Republican legislators offered Maryland taxpayers a real Valentine's Day present. The Taxpayer's Protection Act would require a three-fifth's majority (i.e. 60 percent) in the Maryland State Senate and the House of Delegates to increase any taxes on already beleaguered Maryland citizens. Indeed, a Gonzalez Research poll says more than 67 percent of Maryland voters support the idea.
When Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Democratic majority raised taxes in 2007, supposedly to eliminate the deficit, they also introduced expensive new programs — leading to an even larger deficit when tax revenues actually decreased. Now, fiscally reckless states like Maryland are about to be bailed out by a so-called federal stimulus bill, which doesn't help the real housing crisis, offers few tax incentives for small businesses to expand and hire, but does offer a smorgasbord of goodies for virtually every Democratic special interest in sight. Watch and see if O'Malley and the Democratic legislators use this "one time" stimulus as an excuse to expand state spending even more.
In a recent letter to The Washington Post, Doug Duncan, a Democrat and former Montgomery County executive, complained that state officials' response to the current fiscal crisis "has been reactive and uninspired and voters are getting angrier by the day. So they do what they've always done: raise taxes here, cut around the edges there, raid reserves everywhere, repeat every few months and pray that they get through the next election."
Duncan goes on to say, "Their one concession to how different these times are is to climb aboard the federal bailout bandwagon and cry ‘Feds to the rescue, Feds to the rescue' ... Difficult decisions don't have to be made in Annapolis because the federal stimulus will plug all the holes in the budget that gambling revenues won't."
Duncan mentioned that angered Montgomery County voters passed the Ficker amendment, a tax cap measure, as their first salvo to the oppressive tax situation. I suggest that Maryland voters band together to demand that the General Assembly pass the Taxpayer's Protection Act.
The next step should be to elect a more fiscally responsible governor and more fiscally responsible legislators in the upcoming 2010 General Election.
Frank McCabe, Prince Frederick
The writer is the chairman of the Calvert County Republican Central Committee.
