Telling People What They Want to Hear and the Consequences of Electing These People

This story is a great tale of Tea Party ignorance.

Special Report: A Long Island tax cut backfires on the Tea Party
By Edith Honan and Kristina Cooke, Reuters

MINEOLA, New York — At his January 2010 inauguration, Tea Party-backed Republican Edward Mangano marched up to the podium, pen in hand. Even before being officially declared Nassau County Executive, he signed a repeal of an unpopular home energy tax.

The move elicited chants of "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie" from supporters assembled in the auditorium of Mangano's alma mater, Bethpage High School, 30 miles east of New York City.

"This is very cool and quite an honor," Mangano said as he gave his admirers a thumbs-up.

The fiscal consequences, however, were anything but cool. The repeal set Mangano on an immediate collision course with the state-appointed fiscal overseer, the Nassau County Interim Financial Authority, or NIFA. It culminated in NIFA seizing control of the wealthy New York county's finances on Wednesday.

Nassau's ills exemplify the growing tension across the country as dozens of freshly-elected Tea Party lawmakers, many of whom promised to cut taxes, must find ways to slash record budget gaps as revenues dwindle.

"A lot of people who got elected on this type of anti-tax platform are running into the brick wall of fiscal reality," said Matthew Gardner, executive director of the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington.

Besides being a cautionary tale, the setback in Nassau County is a black eye for the Tea Party, the grassroots movement built around the core principles of constitutionally limited government, free-market ideology and low taxes.

Indeed, a close examination reveals that the affluent area's woes were exacerbated by missteps and miscalculations. Among other things, a Reuters review of dozens of public and private documents showed vague, circular answers to oversight panel queries and basic math errors in budget documents.

In a sense, Nassau County's predicament remains highly unusual. The oversight board created by New York State more than a decade earlier following a financial crisis gave Mangano little margin for error.

But in other ways, Nassau County is not unlike many places in the United States today. A June 2010 survey by the National Association of Counties found 65 percent of the 800 counties polled reported budget shortfalls of between $100,000 and $50 million.

"It's a metaphor for what is happening in the Western world," said Richard Ravitch, who advised New York City during its fiscal crisis in the 1970s. "People don't want to tax but there is a point below which they don't want to cut."

Special Report: A Long Island tax cut backfires on the Tea Party | General Headlines | Comcast.net

 

Just like we cannot keep raising spending without raising taxes, we cannot keep cutting taxes without cutting spending. One party doesn't understand the former, the other doesn't understand the latter. Well, actually, they both do understand it...but they ignore it. At our peril.

 

I get the impression that there is more to this story than is being let on here;

Regardless of which approach, both sides of the budget need to be added and equal, and that requires some knowledge of simple math.

 

Long...long past the point of simple math brother.

 

We have to raise taxes, close loopholes and the only people with money are the millionaires and billionaires of this country. But we just gave them another tax break. It is always claimed that we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. What they don't tell you is that thanks to lobbying efforts, the current tax code allows fully 2/3 of corporations to pay no taxes at all. What difference does the tax rate make if nobody is paying it?

 

I think we are Taxed Enough Already.

 

We did? I guessed I missed that. Now, I did hear that BO extended the existing tax rates. Was that it?

 

You mean the tax cuts that were designed to expire because they knew it wasn't sustainable when they passed it? One of the few things the politicians were actually correct on when they passed a law...but they found a way to get it wrong in the end anyway.

 

No, I mean this whole other tax break that dr moen is referring to.

 

Oh, that is probably the new tax breaks where businesses got to write off a bunch of stuff in 2011 and new 'energy credits' and other stuff int he compromise. It was tens of billions of dollars, I remember that. Or maybe the Estate Tax changes which were not extensions but changes to the tune of tens of more billions.


BTW...

Don’t Like The Deficit Projection? Blame The Tax Compromise. - Brian Wingfield - Business in The Beltway - Forbes

And never a truer quote was made than this...

In Washington, compromise doesn’t always mean that both sides give up a little–as December’s tax deal proved, it sometimes means that both sides get what they want and face the consequences later.