Monday, November 23, 2015

"Temporary" taxes aren't going to stay temporary if #govjerrrybrown gets his way.



Legislators and their union patrons can hardly contain themselves.

Anyone with eyes to see could have predicted this turn of events. In 2012, the Golden State faced a $16 billion budget deficit caused almost entirely by unchecked entitlements, poor revenue estimates, and years of bad legislative choices. Governor Jerry Brown went to voters and said, in effect, he wouldn’t raise their taxes; he wanted them to raise taxes on themselves. But he promised that the pain would only be temporary. And if voters didn’t go along, well, the governor couldn’t guarantee what might happen next to public schools, health care for the poor, and other beloved programs. No pressure or anything—just vote for Proposition 30 and nobody else would get hurt. Brown tramped up and down the state in the weeks before the election, quoting scripture as he often does to make his case. When the ballots were all counted, 55.4 percent of voters went along.

Prop. 30 amended the state’s constitution to raise the sales tax from 7.25 percent to 7.5 percent for four years and retroactively hiked for seven years the income tax on Californians earning more than $250,000. The top tax bracket went from 10.3 percent to 13.3 percent, giving the Golden State the distinction of boasting the highest marginal income-tax rates in America. The “temporary” measure was supposed to raise anywhere from $6.4 billion to $9 billion a year, with the bulk of the money intended for public schools (or, at least, the public school teachers’ beleaguered retirement fund). Brown admonished legislators in his January 2013 “state of the state” address not to let the additional revenues cloud their judgment. “The people have given us seven years of extra taxes,” he said. “Let us follow the wisdom of Joseph, pay down our debts, and store up reserves against the leaner times that will surely come.”

That notion lasted about a year before state officials—the ones not named Brown—began speaking openly of extending the Prop. 30 hikes forever.