Seawytch
Information isnt Advocacy
"Just when House Republicans are about to provoke a new budget war, one of their own members has broken ranks and proposed a tax increase on the rich. Representative Rick Crawford, a freshman Republican from Arkansas, says the only serious way to begin cutting the deficit is to combine new tax revenue with spending cuts. On Thursday, he introduced a bill calling for a 5 percent surtax on incomes exceeding $1 million.
Mr. Crawford was immediately vilified by Grover Norquist, the antitax vigilante, who said the plan would violate a no-new-tax pledge he signed when running for office. Mr. Crawford faces significant Democratic opposition in the fall and is clearly betting that agreeing to a widely popular tax increase will be more important to his voters than sticking with a foolish, lockstep pledge."
* * *
"Crawford was born in the Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, the son of Ruth Anne and Donny J. "Don" Crawford. Crawford grew up in a military family. His father served in the United States Air Force. He graduated from Alvirne High School in Hudson, New Hampshire. He enlisted in the Army, where he served as a bomb disposal technician for four years, while advancing to the rank of Sergeant. After his service, he attended Arkansas State University and graduated in 1996 with a B.S. in Agriculture Business and Economics."
If tax increases on the rich and corporations is the answer, then explain California. They have the highest tax rates over a vast majority of states, including corporate taxes, and under the control of a Democrat legislature, yet where is that states budget today? Problem?
The facts are that the state collects more taxes and fees as a percent of income than most other states, but local government has lower revenues in California. Total revenues to all governments as a percentage of income are very near the national average. On the expenditure side, the state spends less than the average for other states, but local governments spend much more. High local expenditures are financed by revenue transfers from the state that account for about 40 percent of the states budget. The cause of Californias unusual fiscal relationship is decades of initiatives that more severely constrain local revenues than state revenues.
http://siepr.stanford.edu/publicationsprofile/2217