Contributor

Ray Haynes

Mr. Haynes is an Assembly member representing Riverside and Temecula. He serves on the Appropriations and Budget Committees. [go to Assembly Member Haynes website at California Assembly]

Democrats: Enhance This!
"Revenue enhancers" to enhance their revenue by taking more from you.
by Ray Haynes 5/10/03

Those high placed government types, the ones who prepare budgets, and then try to sell them to the public, and the people who make money off of the budgets by convincing politicians to give them (and not someone else) your tax dollars, are right now thinking of new ways to get more of your money. These government honchos know that you are onto them, and so they change their words from time to time, just to confuse you, and enable themselves to get more of your hard-earned money through taxes.

One of my favorite words currently in use in Sacramento is “revenue enhancers.” My leftist friends tell the press and the public that we “have to balance” reductions in budgets with measures designed to “enhance revenues” to the government. By this they mean they have to raise your tax rates, to make you pay more taxes tomorrow than you do today. Then they can continue to spend the money you are sending them.

And they have proposed many tax increases. They are taxing diapers, income, soft drinks, hard drinks, television sets, bleach, bullets, your cars, and just about everything you use around they house, in order to avoid having to cut back on the amount of your money they are sending to their friends. And trust me on this one, they are sending your money to their friends. Nobody gets more government money unless they have political clout, clout purchased by using the money they make from taxpayer funded government contracts to make campaign contributions to the politicians who – surprise, surprise, fund the government contracts.

So—they want to enhance their revenue by taking more from you. To you, of course, you lose more money out of your paycheck. The problem is that by increasing tax rates they will not “enhance” the revenue the government receives from those increased rates. In fact, the last time the politicians in Sacramento raised your taxes, they actually got less money. In the 1991-92 budget year, revenue was $43.1 billion. That was the year they raised tax rates in California. Revenue the next year fell to $40.9 billion, and the year after that to $40.2 billion. Spending, however, did not decrease, and as a result, California ended up with about $5 billion in debt.

However, when California’s tax rates went down in the 1994-95, 1995-96, 1996-97, 1997-98, 1998-99, and 1999-2000 budget years, California experienced record surpluses. In fact, in those budgets years, revenues went from $40.2 billion to $80 billion. Then, in the 2000-01 budget, when taxes went up, revenue dropped, falling from $80 billion to $66 billion in one year.

Having said all this, I have to say I agree with the Democrats when they say they need revenue enhancing policies. We need more money. I, however, want policies that actually enhance revenues, not decrease them as tax increases do. My suggestion—cut tax rates and regulation on business to increase the number of jobs in this state. Lower worker’s compensation rates on employers, cut taxes (and lower tax rates) on jobs, fewer government inspectors assessing lower fines on employers whose only violation is failing to fill out some form those inspectors use to justify their phony-baloney jobs.

Jobs in the private sector are profit centers for government. Government jobs cost us money. Yet in the last 3 years, California has lost 230,000 manufacturing jobs, and gained about 150,000 government jobs. At the same time, we have gone from a $12 billion surplus to a $35 billion deficit. We raised taxes, and lowered our revenues.

In the newspaper, on the radio and on the internet, you always see advertisements for various muscle “enhancement” remedies for men and women. We all know they’re bogus. Isn’t it time we recognize that artificial government enhancements are just as bogus?