By their fruits, not by their words

The Iowans for Tax Relief (ITR) e-mail newsletter I received yesterday was an absolutely devastating indictment of current Republican leadership. To do so it relied entirely on the words of Iowa House Speaker Kraig Paulsen’s opening day remarks for the current legislative session.

Thinking I was mistaken in interpreting it or that it was some sort of dream sequence of wishful thinking on ITR’s part I looked for alternate sources to verify. Besides The Iowa Republican one can also find the speech of all places at :

The Website of The Iowa House Republicans 

I have included some excerpts for readers to reflect on with respect to what just happened with the billion dollar gas tax increase over five years (a 45% rate increase) that Speaker Paulsen ramrodded through the House. Annotation just does not seem to be necessary as they will write themselves as you read. This is incredible, just incredible.

“As we sit, joined together in the people’s house, I’d like to issue a simple, straightforward challenge to you. While others bring forward their laundry list of funding opportunities, spending priorities, or flashy government programs — I challenge this General Assembly to ensure that government do less and do it better.”

“Government continues to meddle in Iowans’ lives and seems incapable of doing even the smallest jobs correctly — today we must meet the challenge of stopping this intrusion. Just like you, I have been contacted by various interest groups, lobbyists and even government agencies regarding how much MORE money they need just to keep doing what they are currently doing. Do we ever stop to ask, do we really need government doing this activity? Government could do better if it wasn’t trying to do too much. What if we asked government to do less but do it much better?”

“The revenue forecast says we will have an additional $200 million to spend in Fiscal Year 2016. If we cannot fund Iowans’ priorities with an additional $200 million then that means two things: we have too many priorities and we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem.”

“. . . our budget reserves remain full and the ending balance is over $700 million.

“Iowans work hard to earn their money, so they, not us, can invest it for retirement, spend it on necessities and save it for priorities that they deem important. Let’s make sure government operates well in what we’ve asked it to do. Rep. Soderberg – your appropriations committee has done diligent work in the past to spend tax dollars wisely. I’d like you to once again ensure budgets passed in the House stay true to these four principles. The budget must:

Not spend more money than the state takes in.
Not use one-time money to pay for on-going expenses.
Not intentionally underfund entitlement programs to balance the state’s budget.
Return unused tax dollars to Iowa’s taxpayers.”

Speaker Paulsen’s words and actions are irreconcilable. There is an important analysis of the political implications of the tax increase by Craig Robinson available at The Iowa Republican: Republicans Are Out of Touch With the Average Iowan


R Mall

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One Response to By their fruits, not by their words

  1. phil silverman says:

    tax relief for those who make over 250 per yr? I’d love to see it…but most of the top 5% do not need it. Obama has not raised taxes on 95% of taxpayers.

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