Utah Legislators Considering a Tax Increase on Utah's Working Families

The Saturday before last, I attended a Town Meeting in West Jordan with four of our state representatives. Rep. Bird, Rep. Harper, Rep. Mascaro and Rep. Newbold. The town meeting went very well and the legislators did a great job of answering our questions. However, I was very dismayed to learn that some of them were giving serious consideration to increasing taxes on Utah's working families who are hurting the most in order to balance the budget rather than pursue a more fiscally responsible and fiscally conservative path of just cutting spending by whatever is necessary in order to balance the budget. What is worse, this drive to raise the food tax by 3 percent is being spearheaded by a Republican, Rep. Kay McIff.

Gratefully, Gov. Huntsman is standing on the side of Utah's taxpayers in refusing to sign a tax increase on groceries which is a regressive tax that would most adversely affect the poorest among us and it is unlikely that the State House and Senate would be able to override his veto. The Governor is absolutely right in calling for the wholesale abolition of the tax on unprepared food. I sympathize with our legislators who are siding with the Dems in calling for a tax increase because I know how difficult it is to implement spending cuts, but it would be much preferable to implement the proposed 15% across the board spending cut with an exemption for Department of Public Safety to include police and fire departments, homeland security and prisons to ensure that the public safety is maintained.

The legislators also discussed increasing the gas tax, but I would oppose doing that as well as the gas tax is also a regressive tax which hurts Utah's lowest income families the most. I did hear one comment from one of the attendees that they would support these tax increases on food and gas as it would force illegal aliens in the state to pay them and contribute more of their fair share, but that does not justify hurting our low-income families when we can avoid doing so. A less objectionable proposal was submitted by Senate President Waddoups to increase motor vehicle registration fees rather than increase taxes. Raising taxes in the middle of a serious recession is incredibly short-sighted in my opinion. As I noted during the meeting, we should be talking about cutting taxes to stimulate economic growth and job creation, not raising them.

In other news, the Deseret News reports that a surprising majority--59% of Utah's citizens approve of Obama's job performance in the latest poll, but only 39% support his fiscally irresponsible, budget-busting $1.2 trillion "stimulus" bill which the US Senate voted to approve this morning.