Legislators, you?re back. Let us vent our frustration withyour work last year first: !@##!!
Deep breath. OK. We?re composed. Kind of.
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The utopia of “one Maryland” you worked so hard to create during the special session is looking more and more like a wasteland ? or “The Waste Land.” We wonder, like poet T.S. Eliot, “What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow/ Out of this stony rubbish?”
In case you haven?t guessed, we?re talking about the $1.4 billion in new taxes you inflicted on us in November. Gov. Martin O?Malley likes to pepper his speeches with quotes of famous authors, so we thought we?d follow his lead.
What new businesses will spring from that dry soil? You make it even dryer. One of your leaders, House Speaker Michael Busch, said earlier this week that, “People don?t want to hear this, but we probably should have had a broader revenue package” during the special session. Does that mean you plan even more “revenue raising measures” ? aka taxes? Tell us, please. No one can sell their houses right now because of the national mortgage mess, so we?re stuck in Maryland and need time to budget less money for everything except our mortgages, heating and cooling our homes, and gasoline.
The state was already unattractive before the majority of you passed the tax package. Recent reports show nearly 35,000 more people decided to leave Maryland than move here in the pastthree years. Will more people move in now? Will anybody start or grow computer services businesses ? those that employ 54,000 people in the state ? now that they must pay the sales tax?
Or how about launching businesses ? the organizations that employ 82 percent of Marylanders who work ? because of higher corporate taxes? Actions have consequences.
Do you think that Maryland is immune to the economic forces that mold our region, nation and world?
You have a choice. Choose to cut spending. As Winston Churchill said, “We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” The same concept holds for each state.
We?ve pointed out numerous areas to trim over the past year. So has your own Department of Legislative Services (www.ola.state.md.us/) in its regular audits. We?ll refresh your memory with a suggested list of 10 places to cut in an upcoming editorial. But cutting is the only option ? unless you want to live in one Maryland with opportunities for none and high taxes for all.
