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Budgets

“A Wish – A Prayer – And A Credit Card”

Guest post by Jeb Bradley, NH Senator from District 3

So said the Concord Monitor in their June 13th Editorial titled “Not a State Budget to be Proud Of.” How did the Democratic controlled New Hampshire Legislature get into such a predicament?

Spending has jumped by 10.5% while revenues fell through the floor — $102 million behind the estimate for the first eleven months of this fiscal year. Leading the revenue plunge are business taxes – off $43 million, rooms and meals taxes —off $20 million, and interest and dividends taxes — off a whopping $27 million. With the economic recovery anemic at best, revenues are not likely to improve any time soon.

On top of that, the effort to simply expropriate $110 million from a doctor’s medical liability fund (JUA) was deemed to be an unconstitutional taking of private property. All of which created a budget deficit estimated at $300 million by June 2011 when books close – up from a $220 million projection just in April.

Governor Lynch recently called a ‘Special Session’ of the Legislature to confront this alarming deficit – about 10% of the state’s General Fund. The package that emerged from the Special Session includes unprecedented borrowing and one-time revenue sources, uncertain receipt of federal funds, and unspecified sale of State property: The Credit Card.

The non-partisan Legislative Budget Assistant projects one-time revenue sources in the original budget and in the recent deficit package exceed $1 billion. Even excluding the $110 JUA raid and a $50 million reduction of funds that traditionally has gone to cities and towns to lower property taxes – this combined budget package relies upon a whopping 27% of one-time revenue for the General Fund. Nearly $200 million of that amount is unprecedented borrowing for operating expenses rather than capital investments such as buildings or bridges. Much of the balance of one-time revenue was federal stimulus funds.

Even stimulus funds may have reached their limit. Americans, fearful of a Greece-like debt crisis… 

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Just Borrow Them From Washington DC

The rhetorical skirmishes over the replacement of retiring Supreme Court Justice John Broderick have produced some interesting contrasts. We are told by those wishing for prompt action that failing to appoint judges could have an adverse affect on the peoples rights which I have to admit makes sense, except when you consider that there are four superior court and nine district court vacancies (as reported in the Union Leader) languishing somewhere in the appointment/replacement process.

Why The Stimulus Had To Fail

It’s simple economics.  Government money comes from taxpayers.  The more government spends the more it relies on taxpayers to pay for its spending.  The less money taxpayers have the smaller the economy will be the fewer jobs there are, which means less income, less taxes, more debt.  The stimulus, the huge budget bills, the massive … Read more

One Hell Of A Wild Ride

There is always speculation about the state of the economy and plenty of people–mostly middle left–have looked at the goat entrails and pronounced a recovery underway if for no other reason than that they want to.   More than a few folks disagree, and it is fair to say that to some small degree the  opinion is … Read more

New Hampshire Needs To Go Into Rehab

“…state governments learn to rely to much on federal handouts as well. New Hampshire democrats just “balanced” the state budget with more debt and millions in federal money that’s not even there. So now they’ll have to get someone to put it back or their budget will not be “in balance,” like some crack whore begging for another hit.”

Leaving The Scene Of The Crime

Departures from public service are not uncommon.  But how you depart says a lot about who you think you are and what you’ve really accomplished.  Take Kathy Sgambati for example.  She’s leaving the State Senate after only two terms, a paltry four years, but if you read her departure rhetoric it sounds as if she … Read more

A Letter to Susan Almy – NH House Chair of the House Ways and Means Committee

Ms. Susan AlmyChairperson, 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 … Read more

With the NH Legislature being called into special session by Gov Lynch for failure to handle the budget properly….

I’ve heard many times about the "38 new taxes and fees" that were instituted by our Legislature in Concord last year, but I didn’t have the facts in front of me.  I decided to do some research, and to pass it along.  This may be especially helpful to Conservative candidates when going door-to-door, or making statements, explaining to voters why a change in Concord is necessary this November.
 
Using the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy study  (July, 2009, link below), I produced an extract spreadsheet of the taxes and fees that were passed for the following budget years: 2003-2004, 2005-2006, 2007-2008, 2009 (up to June 30, 2009).  This spreadsheet is attached.
 
I also extracted some of the significant and revealing statements from the study (shown below).  I suggest you read the full study to get the complete picture.

If you are a candidate, you would be well-served to get to know the folks at the CNHT.
 
Tom
New Hampshire 9.12 Liberty Action Team

*****

…"So far this year, the legislature has passed 38 new or increased taxes and fees that are budgeted to raise $318.6 million over two years. For historical comparisons, there were 29 new taxes and fees passed in the previous two years. In previous legislative sessions, the low has been 9 in 2003-4 with 20 in both 2001-2 and 2005-6. The majority of tax and fee increases have been passed separately from the budget itself."…

…"A study of the total number of tax and fee increases over the last decade shows a consistently high number with the exception of the 2003-2004 legislature.  However, the current total for this legislature at 38 is nearly double the 19.5 average of the last four budgets."…

"The largest taxes and the fees that are being used to raise money for new spending tend to be part of the budget process. Many more fees are added on after the budget or in stand alone bills. In the previous four budget cycles, 30 taxes and fees were added as part of the budget and an additional 48 occurred as stand alone bills, many of them in the second year of the legislature. So far this year, 35 have been part of the budget and 3 as stand alone bills. History suggests more fees will be enacted in the next 12 months."

Basically, most of these new taxes and fees are being used to pay for shortfalls in the budget, due to excessive spending, not for increases in the cost of doing business or regulating – spending must be reduced)

…"The exact difference between a tax and fee is something of a judgment call. In general a Tax…

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Unhitch The Debt Wagon

We watch with amusement as the legislature attempts again to reconcile it’s bad fiscal manners, elbows on the table, slurping soup, and reaching across each others plates as they huddle over another last minute committee of conference. At the top of the menu is the budget, which is a coarse left over from last year that no one can stomach, or manage to keep down.

Does Prohibition Work?

On the question of using gambling revenue to hide irresponsible democrat spending, State Senator Maggie Hassan was quoted in this mornings Union Leader saying. "My question is, does prohibition work? I don’t think it does." It’s quite entertaining, the things desperate people say when they are under the gun to cover their own ass. The … Read more

My Precious

In the words of Mary Jane Wallner (D-Concord), "“Many aspects of this bill are painful, (but) it is the responsible action to take,” to avoid painfully deep budget cuts later, she said.""  MJ is quoted by this morning’s Union Leader on the passage of SB 450, the Bob The Builder Budget repair Bill.  SB 450 … Read more

Shat Bill (SB) 450

SB 450, the omnibus, mix and match, fix and patch, how do we cover all that unnecessary spending democrats had to have, budgetpalooza bill, is up for a vote today.  But it poses an intentional problem for Republicans.  It would repeal the LLC tax, but while adding another boat load of taxes, fees, and if … Read more

Give It Back

From this morning’s Union Leader; the Legislature is looking at an insurance premium tax change.  Apparently someone was granted decreases in exchange for a promise of creating more jobs.  Jobs were not created to their satisfaction so the elected officials see no reason to continue to support the reduced taxation.   Neal Kurk (R-Weare) was quoted … Read more

No Gambling

In the smoldering ruin of SB 489–this years gambling bill, even after a massive campaign by Millennium gaming and its big-money FixItNow NH campaign quarter-backed by their Public relations goo-roo Richard Killion, (whom I suspect is this guy), we get comments like this, from this morning’s Union Leader.

“What’s clear is that today’s vote runs contrary to the will of the people, who, overwhelmingly support expanded gaming and see it as the only acceptable new revenue option,” he said. “The people do not want higher taxes.”

The people do not want higher taxes.  But nothing else he says makes any sense unless he means the will of "the minority of" people who overwhelmingly support expanded gaming, and see it as the only acceptable option."  Isn’t language fun?

Richard really should have been around New England long enough to know that the one thing you can count on in New Hampshire is for voters to contact their state reps and let them know how they feel about an issue.  So from square one this statement is at the very least disingenuous.  Before we even get to square two we know that that is exactly what the people did, and the product of that opinion (how the House voted) is clearly represented in the roll call.  Consider the following.

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The New Hampshire Desperation Party

In an April 10th press release the NHDP bases its budget management prowess on the fact that Norm Major said, "I don’t see any exaggeration in the revenues at this point in time."  Of course they leave out the part where he mentions that…(quoting from the same Union Leader Article) But when he looks two … Read more

NH House School Musical

Last year, at budget time, liberals, democrats, a few RINOs, and even some chickens were asking where the cuts were.  No, not cold cuts but budget cuts.  The libs had just added another 10% to the state budget, and they wanted to know where, how, and what part of that we could possibly cut.

Let’s reminisce on the stupidity of that for a moment.  They took the budget they had ballooned by 12%-13%, added another 10% to it, but had no idea where they could cut it under the growing umbrella of job losses in an economic downturn?

“Show us the cuts!”  So we did.  They ignored them.

Buckley, Sullivan, Larsen, Norelli, Eaton, Smith, and all the rest of our left-wing fiscal castaways who promoted or legislated more spending were still stranded on a Desert Island of their own making from whose only possible escape was a broad-based tax.  To prove it, they lined up another few dozen smaller fees and taxes on the beach, like coconuts, to spell out the words “Show us the cuts.”  They then ignored the cuts we showed them, acted like they didn’t exist, and instead added an exclamation point called the JUA money grab and the tent tax, then lit it all on fire with a small business tax.

They were very briefly, quite happy with themselves.  But as it turns out, while people can be convinced to vote for Democrats when they are mad at Republicans, they still don’t like taxes and irresponsible spending and have forgotten that you can’t have one without the other.  (See hypnotic gas spewed by Obamunism for some idea of how that happened)  They also forgot that liberals have a hearing defect known as left-wing pattern deafness that not only prevents them from listening to constituent objections, it worsens as their majority grows.  But midnight robberies and an LLC tax in a state where some 95% of business is a small business is just like passing a broad-based tax and killing job growth all at the same time, and none of the usual democrat memes could be made to fit into their growing budget hole.

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