"Would paying NO tax on your next $500k in income be considered a tax cut?"
The previous thread had to do with the tax cuts that Bush championed before we managed to palm him off on the rest of the country. He pushed through a cut in 1997 and 1999, in addition, spent the surplus that we had at the time. At the time he was elected, Texas was just starting to go into the red. By 2001, given that the legislature only meets every other year, Texas was already running a $700 million deficit. So his term in office saw Texas go from a $1.8 billion surplus to a $700 million deficit, quite an accomplishment of fiscal conservatism. Because things were already past crisis point, there were cross the board cuts without a lot of thought given to their impact. Note: Texas isn't known as a state with a whole lot of services to begin with. Our taxes, pre-cut, were pretty close to the bottom in the country. OTOH, we are known as "Like Mississippi with Roads"...
And then when the legislature met in 2003, they were more concerned with trying to find a legal basis to redistrict during a non-census year to increase the number of Republicans in office, they didn't spend any time trying to sort out the budget mess. So things are getting worse again. Before long, we will be known as "Like Afghanistan with Roads"...
Short answer, I don't want to see any type of tax cut until things like the deficit are addressed. Period. |
