Contributor

John Campbell

John Campbell (R-Irvine) is a California State Senator representing the 35th District in Orange County. He represents the cities of Newport Beach, Laguna Beach, Irvine, Costa Mesa, Huntington Beach, Seal Beach and Cypress. He can be reached through his Senate website and through the website for his California Senate campaign. [go to Campbell index]

It's Baaaaaack!
Tax increase talk...
[John Campbell] 5/2/05

The first act of Arnold Schwarzenegger on the day he was sworn into office was to repeal the tripling of the car tax that occurred under former Governor Davis. The car tax hike was a central motivator for the recall and Governor Schwarzenegger had the tax reduced before the afternoon inaugural hors d'oeuvres had gotten cold.

Since then, Democrats have been reluctant to talk about tax increases for fear of further public backlash against them. As recently as January 13th of this year, the Sacramento Bee reported that Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez stated, "You don't see us saying we're going to raise taxes." The same article went on to quote Senate President Pro-Tem Don Perata saying, "If we jump up right now and say the.... cure is more money, people are going to stop listening to us."

Even though politically they were not calling for tax increases, the whole ethos of the Democratic Party requires continually escalating taxes in order to meet their objectives of income redistribution and increased socialism and government activism in our society. So, they changed their message, but not their goal.

Now, 3 months later, their back to business as usual. Bolstered by signs that the unions’ multimillion dollar ad campaign against Governor Schwarzenegger is starting to have an effect, Democrats are returning to openly advocating tax increases. Wednesday's Sacramento Bee quoted the same Senate President Pro-Tem Don Perata saying, "We have to raise taxes to pay for schools. There, we've said it."

So, the age-old tax vs. spend debate is engaged again. Regular readers of this missive already know all the reasons that tax increases are a terrible idea. But to put it allegorically, if you had a relative that was always in debt no matter how much money he made because he gambled it all away at a casino, is the solution to give him more money? Of course not, because he would gamble away whatever you gave him. The solution is to keep him away from the casino.

What taxes would they raise? An analysis by the California Taxpayers Association says that there are more than 80 bills introduced in the legislature to raise taxes or "fees." These bills would raise taxes by at least $65 Billion annually which would be a 60% increase in taxes. I obviously can't list all 80 without causing your modem to choke. But here are a few of the tax increases most likely to be pushed by prominent Democrats:

AB6 (Chan): Increases the income tax to 10% (from 9.3%) for incomes more than $100,000 and 11% for incomes more than $200,000

AB9 (Coto): Would impose the full sales tax (currently 7.75% in Orange County) on services including club memberships, telephone bills, legal, accounting and bookkeeping services, security services, renting of limos or planes, custom computer software, marina services, architectural, engineering and consulting services and a whole host of other items which are not currently taxed

AB 655 (Leno): Imposes a new 1% entertainment tax to be used to fund the California Arts Council

ACA7 (Nation): Reduces the vote requirement to increase some taxes from the current 2/3rds to 55%.

SB 392 (Cedillo): Increase the sales tax by 1/2% to pay for what is deemed as "public safety purposes"

SB 942 (Chesbro) and AB 1612 (Pavley): These are the annual tobacco tax increases to fund "litter prevention" efforts

SB 658 (Kuehl): Allows $6 increase in the car tax to "mitigate the adverse affects of motor vehicles" --- wait a minute, a car tax increase? This sounds vaguely familiar…

Keep a tight grip on your wallet. They are coming after it.

Workers’ Comp. Update: Thursday, the Senate confirmed Governor Schwarzenegger’s nominee Andrea Hoch to head the Division of Workers’ Compensation. She received the minimum 21 votes needed for confirmation. The approval of Hoch, who has worked fastidiously during the past year to reform the workers’ compensation system, is good news for California. CRO

§