Ms. Susan Almy
Chairperson, House Ways and Means Committee
I read in a newspaper that your committee voted to collect $85M through seven different taxes so that the cuts proposed by Gov. Lynch to the state budget need not take place. The paper also reported that the revenues were running low in April.
It appears that there is never enough money to carry out all of your projects, new and old. In your view, it is perfectly all right to tax people like me that had made sure to live responsibly, live within my means, save for my retirement (I am not in the NHRS!) and take care of my family.
I may have been lucky if you considered that I started with less than $100 (after paying for my own college expenses) to my name when I graduated from college in 1966.
I am not relating those personal items to draw sympathy from you or from the government. It used to be that people were taught to rely on themselves as the opportunities to elevate oneself through hard work and thrift abounded. Governments, both the federal and state were much smaller in scope and left people free to pursue their own goals and ambitions.
Now the governments assume the position of an overbearing parent except they take via taxes and fees from those that live frugally and disperse those funds to the groups that appeal to the political bodies, some times for quid pro quo reasons.
Since part of my retirement income depends on dividends, interests and capital gains (through measured stock sales), your committee has no problem instituting tax on that income. You see, my retirement after 35 years of service with a Fortune 500 private company yields only a meager pension. It is not like the top shelf of the NHRS where one can get a pension of 100% base pay with generous health care subsidies to boot. I pay income tax in the state that says it does not have income tax!
You also want to institute an insurance premium tax. Since I pay insurance premiums all out of my own pocket-Medicare, Medicare supplement, wife’s insurance, auto, homeowners- I look forward to paying more for it. Isn’t that just fair? Why should I be left with any money in my pocket because I may spend it foolishly at a restaurant or on vacation?
Throw in the federally mandated $500B in Medicare cuts looming on the horizon, you can understand my anxiety.
You are not done with me yet. You want to tax all the electricity generated by conventional power plants-fossil-fueled and nuclear-fueled exempting of course the renewable plants. My electricity rates will go up. Since it takes a reliable electric sump pump to work vigorously to keep my basement dry I will be paying more for it with your action. I am sure you are convinced that I am not paying enough for it now.
Let me just illustrate the lack of viability of the so-called renewable energy sources. Let us convert the state house to run on wind and/or solar power alone. That is, the building will no longer be serviced by the conventional power grid. Let us see how many hours in a day you can conduct your business there. You see, physics can not be controlled by legislative edicts. Renewable energy will drive up the cost of electricity because we have no means of storing huge amounts of electric energy as the wind doesn’t blow all the time or the sun doesn’t shine all the time. In order to support the unpredictable nature (power level and timing), the conventional power plants that you are so eager to tax must be held as a spinning reserve at extremely low efficiency so that they can come on to fill in the sudden loss of power through the renewable power sources. By the way, higher electric energy costs will put a damper on economic activity (lower tax revenue) and will reduce the discretionary spending by people.
The legislators must understand that it is in their interest to pursue policies that elevate general prosperity so the people can afford to spend on the state mandated projects.
I understand that your committee has voted to grab some $2.5M from the dedicated funds, such as police training, boating access and hazardous cleanup. I am hoping that I won’t have an accidental breakage of another politician-sponsored project of CFL (contains 3 Mg. of hazardous mercury in each bulb). That means my property taxes will go up to fund those activities at the local level since the unfunded mandates will continue. That is on top of reducing the state funding to the NHRS to 20%-another cost downshift.
I am just thankful that I never took up the habit of smoking tobacco products. Taxes on those items are going up again. Smokers have been asked to support all kinds of government programs such as SCHIP. Pretty soon, the state must encourage having certain percentage of smokers so that that revenue stream will not diminish!
I guess this is how the state house promotes public good (Art 31) mentioned in the State Constitution.
Do you think you can help me and hundreds of thousands of people in New Hampshire by downsizing the budget and avoiding all those taxes and fees? After all, the state budget has ballooned in the last fifteen years at a compounded rate of 9% while the state GDP had risen only at a 3% rate. The budget has busted the ability of the people to pay for it long ago.
By the way, all the responsible individuals and families cut back on their personal budgets when faced with shrinking income. I think the state can do the same.
I have also heard the argument that the services demanded of the state goes up during economic downturns while the revenues shrink at the same time. The lesson that the state must have learned long ago to cope with it is to reduce the budgets during the healthy economic times (and not start many new spending programs or expand the existing ones to buy votes) and save for recessionary times- balloon the rainy day funds, for example. I understand that it is difficult to implement it when it is the state’s money that the legislators are concerned with.
I think we need to cap the state budget at a maximum of 5% of the state GDP. It will force the legislators and the governor to prioritize spending and act very much like the regular families.
Respectfully submitted,
Art Gopalan