Idiots: Oregon Voters Approve Income And Business Tax Hikes

Of course, it's all for the children.

Oregon voters approved two special tax measures Tuesday designed to close a $733 million state budget gap. With 80% of the expected vote tallied, the Associated Press reported "yes" voters for Measures 66 and 67 garnered about 54% of Oregon's mail-in ballots.

Elections here are by mailed ballot only. Tuesday was the last day ballots could be cast.

Measure 66 increases Oregon's personal-income-tax rate by two percentage points for households earning over $250,000 a year. Measure 67 calls for an increase in the state's minimum corporate income tax, currently $10 a year, and imposes a tax on gross revenues for corporations that do not report a profit.

..."Passage of these measures means we keep core services of education, health care and public safety that Oregon families, businesses, and communities count on," said Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt, a Democrat who represents Clackamas County. Defeat, he said, would have forced the state to cut nearly a billion dollars more from such services.

The twin ballot measures also served as a gauge of anti-business populism and highlighted a nationwide debate over whether to fix state budgets by targeting the affluent. But they also fueled resentment of "tax and spend" legislators, as well as public-employee unions whose members enjoy job security at a time when thousands here have lost jobs.

Two fearless predictions:

1-Democrats around the country will use this as evidence for claims that people are dying to pay more taxes. Well, to have other people pay more taxes.

2-In about a year there will be a spate of stories about how these measures didn't raise as much money as predicted. How businesses laid off more people than expected and new jobs didn't spring up to replace them.

Liberals never quite understand that people with means won't sit around on their asses while the state confiscates ever increasing amounts of their money and that companies don't actually pay taxes but instead pass them on either through higher costs or savings like firing people.

The people of Oregon might want to ask their neighbors to the south in California how the idea of taxing your way to prosperity works out in the end.

posted by DrewM. at 11:27 AM

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