Say Anything Blog

I didn’t think it was possible, but even with the state running massive budget surpluses they’re actually worried about the government not having enough money.

North Dakota Farm Bureau members adopted policy opposing the proposed initiated measure to reduce income tax by 50 percent and corporate income tax by 15 percent. The action was taken during the NDFB Annual Convention and Exposition in Bismarck over the weekend.

If the required petition signatures are obtained and the voters adopt the proposed tax cut in the 2008 general election, state revenues are expected to decline by $375 million, based on current projections.

“Traditionally NDFB supports all forms of tax cuts; however, we believe this proposed 50 percent reduction in individual income tax is too much and will not be sustainable when the oil industry or the economy takes a downturn,” Aasmundstad added.

“Our members are concerned that with reduced state revenues, the state would not be able to meet its obligations to help fund local governments, like schools, counties and cities,” said Aasmundstad. “Then that additional burden would fall back on property taxes.”

Funny that they’re worried about the budget when it comes to tax cuts, but not so worried about spending.  Here’s a graph indicating the growth in government spending over the last several years (as compared to inflation):

Remember that the percentage of growth each year based on the spending from the previous year, so what your actually looking it is the amount the government increased spending over and above the dollar amount spent the previous year.

Clearly, this is unsustainable.

Now the Farm Bureau is claiming that they don’t want a tax cut because they don’t want the burden of all this spending to fall back on property taxes.  And that’s a justifiable concern, but the problem is that they don’t seem to want to do anything about spending.  They want tax rates to stay high so that the state government can continue to spend billions.

At some point something has got to give.  The rate of government growth in North Dakota is unsustainable, and unless we start taking away some of that revenue so that the legislature can’t spend it we’re going to find ourselves in a mess down the road.

If the Farm Bureau cared about responsible government they’d have gotten behind this tax cut initiative.  As it is they don’t care, which is why they’re supporting the tax-and-spend status quo.