Issue Position: Fiscal Responsibility

Issue Position

Part of fiscal responsibility is recognizing that budgeting problems are complicated and there are no easy answers, whether there are surpluses or shortfalls. I was recently at a candidate forum (as an observer). The candidates were asked whether there was a spending problem or a revenue problem. The questioner added the proviso that the candidates couldn't say "both". The reality is that it is indeed both. It is the height of irresponsibility to choose one or the other because of ideology.

It's not right to continue to cut necessary programs for those, as Hubert Humphrey said, are in the "dawn and twilight of their lives'. It's not right to short change the future success of our kids and our economic future by cutting support in both K-12 and higher education.

We do need to encourage business growth and stability. We, as a state, need to invest in small businesses and innovation. It's good for all of us.

But it's not right to subsidize the bottom line of successful corporations that don't need our tax dollars to be profitable. Microsoft is a good example.

When it started, it was a smart investment of our tax dollars to grant tax breaks to the company. But as it grew, our tax dollars weren't needed to ensure its profitability. In 2010, Microsoft was was still being given tax breaks of over $110,000,000. They could probably find that in the couch of the executive lounge. There are other examples. People at the bottom end of the economic scale also pay a disproportionate share of their income to state and local taxes.

Clearly, our state's revenue system is out of whack. It is cumbersome, opaque, and obsolete. It needs major work. It may not be that we need more money, but we do need to collect it more fairly and invest it more wisely.

Source