The Las Vegas Sun recently editorialized the following:
“Now, with sales and gaming revenue not increasing as much as had been projected for the first months of this new fiscal year, the governor is acting true to form. Instead of taking the responsible approach - convening a special session of the Legislature to pass reasonable tax increases to make up for any shortfall - the governor is asking agency chiefs to provide him with possible budget cuts.”
But unlike the children’s song where “the cheese stands alone,” Gov. Gibbons isn’t the only one standing in the way of the higher taxes the Sun, Jim Rogers, government bureaucrats and the Democrats desire. GOP Assembly Minority Leader Heidi Gansert informed us this morning that her caucus “would not be supporting any new taxes” should a Special Session of the Legislature be called to address the projected revenue shortfall.
What makes this extremely significant is that if Gansert can hold her caucus together and all 15 members vote against any tax hikes in a Special Session, there’s absolutely no chance for any tax hikes to make it to the governor’s desk thanks to the constitutionally imposed requirement that all tax hikes receive a 2/3 vote in both houses of the Legislature. The 15 assembly Republicans, if they stick together, are able to block any and all tax hikes in the 42-member assembly.
So much for the foolish notion that the minority party has no power. It just requires someone who knows how to use what power IS available and have the political will to do so. Indeed, it’s quite arguable that Republicans in Congress have been much more effective in thwarting the Democrats’ agenda now that they’re in the minority than they ever were at advancing their own agenda while in the majority.
Gansert has been the new Minority Leader for all of one month now, and already she’s proving that - as she said when she took over - her caucus is going to do things differently. Unifying her caucus’s 15 votes to block tax hikes is something very different that all of us taxpayers can cheer for. You go, girl!
(Oops. Sorry. Was that sexist?)
Posted on November 1st, 2007 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: Nevada
I don’t understand the Sun’s perspective on this. Jim Gibbons ran for governor on a platform that ruled out tax hikes. He was elected on this platform. If Nevadans don’t want him to keep his campaign promise, then they shouldn’t have elected him in the first place. What happened to “say what you do, do what you say”? Is this an alien concept in the political world?
This is like Christianity. According to Christian beliefs, Satan entices us to commit sin, then condemns us when we succumb to his enticements. God warns us not to sin, then offers love and forgiveness when we do sin. In this case, the liberals want conservatives to abandon conservative principles (spending cuts) and embrace liberal principles (tax hikes), but they’ll be the first ones to condemn the conservatives when they do this. I don’t recall any liberals providing cover for GHWBush when he abandoned his “no new taxes” pledge in 1990.
Senator Raggio as quoted in today’s Las Vegas Sun:
“There are people out there who think our tax base is perfect the way it is and we should cut spending. That’s easy to say unless you sit on a money committee in the Legislature every two years and listen to the needs.”
Sounds like Senator Beers needs to have another “this isn’t the time to go wobbly” talk with the majority leader.
John,
Often times I like what you have to say, but this ; “In this case, the liberals want conservatives to abandon conservative principles (spending cuts) and embrace liberal principles (tax hikes)” is bulls@#$. As you yourself have said, the Republican Congress kicked off a massive increase in givernment spending (look at the number of earmarks that came into life after Republicans got control of the Congress), along with the first ever war time tax decrease.
So, explain if you will, how raising taxes is a ‘liberal principle” to you. To me, it seems like the Democratic Party comes in after the Republican Executive and raises taxes to pay for the tax cutting-but governement spending party that the Republican Executive threw for it’s campaign contributors (ie, they pay down the debt).
This increase in spending with a concurrent decrease in revenue’s has held true since Nixon (go tho the Hertitage Foundation’s website for proof). Carter raised revenue to pay of Nixon’s party. Clinton raised taxes to pay of Raygun’s party. Now Reid and Pelosi seem poised to kill the taxcuts approved by the Republican Party during a war.
Correct me if I am wrong, but it seems that the current price of the USD on the world market (lowest currency exchange values in a generation), seem to be the result of the very loose Republican economic and monetary policies of the past 7 years.
I meant it to read that the Democratic Party “pay down the debt”. The Rs increase federal spending but decrease federal revenues.
Southy: I agree with you when you write in terms of Republican/Democrat. However, in my posting I used the terms conservative/liberal instead of Republican/Democrat. I left the Republican Party in 2003, and it was for an accumulation of reasons, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the tax hikes brokered by a Republican governor and Republican state senate majority. On top of that, when the Republican governor didn’t get his tax hikes passed, he went to court to overturn the 2/3 supermajority requirement to increase taxes via judicial fiat. Like Tip O’Neill said, all politics is local.
Maybe I’m wrong, but to me the concept of low taxes, low spending, balanced budgets is something that conservatives should favor. Likewise, to me liberalism is associated with higher taxes to support increased social spending so that programs like the after school recreation programs at the Carson City Parks & Recreation Department can be expanded to include the 26 kids who are on the waiting list to join the program.
The think tanks that are hammering at President Bush the hardest right now for his fiscal irresponsibility are the Heritage Foundation (conservative) and the Cato Institute (libertarian). On Meet the Press earlier this year, Mary Matalin said that the election of 2006 was a repudiation of Republicanism, not of conservatism. I hope she was right.
Unfortunately, the electorate is somewhat schizophrenic. They want low taxes and higher spending. If taxes have to be raised, that’s fine so long as it’s someone else’s taxes. If spending has to be reduced, that’s fine too so long as my kids still get to go to their after school programs at the Carson City Parks & Rec Department.
John,
Your last sentence explains it all.
As for ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’, I have just en-coded these term as R and D, respectively, as that is their normal intent.
Ultimately, elections are about the ‘elected’ using tax-payer money to dole out favors. First to the specific persons and then the organizations that gave them campaign money (pay to play); and lastly, to the electorate they throw a crumb so the elected offical can appeal to the “masses” come election time. Like Heller and Ensigin who insert pork (earmarks) into appropriation bills and the vote against the bill. This way they can put out press releases (like they HAVE!), saying look what I brought home ($for waste water treatment), and yet being able to retain the option, come election time, to say they were AGAINST this wild increase in spending. These sick F*&%s should be thrown out of office for this kind of behavior. Would anyone reading this this allow this kind of duplicity from their kids? Hell No.