They’re not the same
Apr 1, 2015, 9:31 AM | Updated: 11:49 am
(AP)
I’ve been told that after the Republican-led state senate voted in favor of a highway package that included higher gas taxes, there is no difference between the parties and both are equally ignorant, obtuse and unconcerned about the plight of working Washingtonians or the problem of an ever bigger government.
Let’s look more closely at that.
Let’s grant that the transportation package is expensive. Does that make it not conservative? Conservatives agree we need to pay for new things when we buy them. New roads are needed, improvements have to be made, and gas tax dollars are guaranteed for highways.
Democrats try to divert highway/roads money elsewhere, Republicans preserve it. Democrats argue that amidst “functionally obsolete bridges and unsafe infrastructure” we should use hundreds of millions of gas tax dollars for bike trails and walking paths. Democrats want billions for inefficient light rail plans that, after more than a decade, have failed to reach promised goals, ridership or reach.
The state Department of Transportation refuses to make traffic congestion a factor of consideration when determining state projects. Democrats (including Governor Jay Inslee, who recently pretended otherwise when discussing I-405 tolls) have sided with WSDOT on this. Republicans have insisted WSDOT revise their decision making to include it.
Now for the State General Fund Budget:
Governor Jay Inslee released his plan for Washington state’s budget. It is a plan heavy on new taxes that includes a new carbon-tax that defined Washington employers as polluters and would have meant higher gas prices at the pump without the guarantee that those higher prices meant more investment in the state’s roads (whereas by law gas taxes must be spent on state roads/highways).
Democrats in the State House answered back showing the same appetite for new taxes, but not for the carbon-tax. Despite all the fundraising claims that Republican opposition to things like the carbon-tax meant the GOP was at war with the planet, House Democrats made the governor’s tax proposal disappear and instead inserted their own capital gains tax on Washington’s richest.
Of course the federal income tax started as a tax on “the richest” and is now a confusing, jumbled mess that impacts everyone. It is so complicated not even its enforcers can reliably interpret it, and it sucks up countless man-hours of otherwise productive time into citizen efforts to comply. Odds of a new capital gains tax staying only on the Super rich? Ask yourself if you’ve ever – in your life (or your grandmothers’) – heard political parties agree that there’s enough money for everybody – ever? No?
Me neither.
So I can look in my crystal ball – as can you – and see how this works. You start with the richest. After that, anything you do is not a new tax, but an extension of an existing tax and you keep extending until you get to the real money which is in the majority of people in the state of Washington. Get the camel’s nose under the tent, and you’re two-thirds there.
Which leaves us with the Republican-led Majority Coalition in the State Senate. They released their plan yesterday. No new taxes. They use the additional $3 billion the state is collecting from a better economy to satisfy state needs. They invest more than another billion in education.
In the plan, class size reduction is targeted to where studies show it would actually do the most good (for the most part). College tuition is reduced. State employee raises are changed to have a greater impact on the least paid. Mental health service funds are replenished.
No difference? You can disagree with certain decisions or priorities, but to claim no difference is to refuse to look at the arguments between officials in our state and what’s at stake should those arguments go another way. It’s to pretend that how you pay for roads and who gets to use them makes no difference. It’s to pretend that billions of new tax dollars would make no difference.
In short, it’s a liberal argument, because if you honestly think there is no real difference, why not give the left in this state all their funding priorities? Why not grant the governor and the House Democrats all their new taxes since supposedly no one will feel them any stronger than they would no tax at all.
Say the GOP is wrong in priorities, should do more, or should do less, but don’t say there’s no difference. Saying there’s no difference is arguing as a Democrat.