I read a recent post by Sacramento Bee writer Steve Weigand over on the Bee’s Capitol Alert Website (it’s free and FR recommended, but registration is required)… There Steve belittles legislative Republicans for celebrating Tax Freedom Day earlier this week (the day in the year when, for Californians, you have finished earning enough money to pay your combined federal, state and local tax burden for the year if everything earned to now went to pay those taxes and fees). Steve end’s his comments thusly:
Anyway, the Reep lawmakers gathered in the Capitol press conference room to repeat the party mantra: Taxes are bad, Proposition 13 is sacred and Democrats and bureaucrats are to blame for the Golden State not being more golden.
"California has the fourth-highest tax burden in the country," huffed Assemblyman Bob Huff, R-Diamond Bar. "To put it another way, Californians are working for the government one-third of the time."
"Today is the day to say, ‘You know what? You should not have to work so long to pay government before you can pay yourself,’ " said Assembly GOP leader Mike Villines, R-Clovis.
Bad old government. Except for schools, public safety, social services, transportation and other infrastructure systems, what good is it? And why can’t someone else pay for it besides us?
Now Steve is darned good at writing tongue-and-cheek — I will laugh out loud at much of what he writes, even when I don’t agree with him. That said, I think it is fair to acknowledge that legislative Republicans are making an important point — while there are legitimate and appropriate functions for state government, they believe that our Golden State government has grown well beyond that point — and where government is doing something, thanks especially to the domination of public employee unions, it is doing it in a more expensive and costly way than it should be — and taxpayers are taking the hit.
Steve, I would direct you to the final recommendations of the Governor’s now-moth balled California Performace Review report where a presentation was made with 1200 recommendations to save an estimated $32 billion over five a five year period. Had these recommendations been implemented (back in 2005), I dare say that we wouldn’t have the financial hole that we do now in state government. But instead, we did the opposite. Instead of streamlining government, it has ballooned.
The Republican position is not that there should be no functions of government, and no taxes — that would be anarchy. We believe in a limited role for government allowing more freedom, and yes, more personal responsibility, for the people of California. It’s the GOP position that the only responsible way to deal with our budget mess is to "undo" all of the irresponsible growth. Californian’s should not have to sacrifice their freedom and liberty to feed the appetite for government growth of the Democrats, period.
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