Saturday, February 21, 2009

Tax increase "gains" going up in smoke

This one is unbelievable.

Gov. Steve Beshear has been sending people door-to-door to sign up tens of thousands of new health insurance recipients at taxpayer expense and the federal government is going to pile on thousands more.

How, exactly, is this supposed to address Kentucky's spending problems?

The rest of the story is that the February 4th legislation was a 61 cent federal cigarette tax increase. That combined with Kentucky's 30 cent tax hike and fewer people smoking means less revenue going forward.

So we are increasing spending for a program we already can't afford. We are on our way to expanding government at the wrong time and burning through tax increase money and $50 million "borrowed" from the public employee health fund.

This is the part where a tax increase on the few comes after the rest of us.

1 comment:

Hempy said...

Your hypocrisy reeks again. You talk out of one side of your mouth criticizing the academic achievements of Kentucky's students, then whine if government wants to utilize a program to provide those same children with needed health care.

Did it ever occur to you that a child's health and academic performance might be related?

Oh, I'm sorry. You're conservative. I keep forgetting what John Stuart Mill said about conservatives:

"Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives."

I'd remind you that it was Dr. Fletcher's (R) administration that did its best to force low income children off the SCHIP program by making it difficult, onerous and burdensome for parents to sign up for SCHIP and to have to renew it monthly. I guess that's an example of "compassionate conservatism."