Liberal Loon Carol Hedges' Fiscal Policy Institute is out with a new email blast, this time talking down the fledgling economic recovery, and complaining that the additional $300 million in tax revenues projected in a recent Legislative Council Staff (LCS) economic analysis doesn't cut it.
The email complains the additional $300 mil isn't enough to fund everything FPI wants and that "Colorado residents have grown used to being relieved because the revenue picture is not as bad as it could have been." You see, Coloradans have grown used to so much economic growth this year that they're spoiled and don't appreciate how much we need to raise taxes. Talk about being out of touch with reality.
In the email they point to a new fiscal analysis by FPI on the state of the budget. In reading the document you have to wonder whether FPI staff passed Econ 101 in college. How else to explain their conclusions when they include information like this?
"LCS predicts tight banking and credit conditions will hamper the recovery, as will the slack housing market. OSPB sees inflation and the slow growth in start-up businesses as additional drags on a robust recovery."
So the economy, while slowly recovering, is still in fragile shape. Small business owners and entrepeneurs are struggling to grow their businesses and FPI's solution is to raise taxes? FPI and the rest of the alphabet soup of liberal special interest groups pushing for a tax hike are increasingly being exposed for their single minded obsession with raising your taxes.
Pushing for a tax hike while acknowledging how little cash small business has to spare is an odd tactic. It's one thing for them to hock a tax hike when the economy is strong, but their obsession with jacking up rates regardless of their economic impact just makes them look foolish.
We think the increased revenues represent a point in favor of those arguing we can only grow our way out of our budget shortfalls, rather than tax our way out. Raising taxes, as independent studies have shown, will only serve to kill economic growth and not provide the revenues the tax hike proponents promise. Unemployed people don't pay taxes.
A better idea to fund schools? Lower the cost of doing business in Colorado through lower tax rates and less regulatory red tape, which will grow the economy, and thus revenues. Unfortunately, for FPI that is a concept they just don't seem to grasp.