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|  | | | Catchy phrases and tax shifts fooled some of us
The no-new tax mantra has been around for years now. We've heard it since Jesse Ventura and the state legislature spent down a surplus accumulated in the 1990s because a robust economy was easily funding our state government. At that time, a guy by the name of Tim Pawlenty was majority leader in the House. Pawlenty was instrumental at that time in shifting a good share of the funding for K-12 schools from local control to the state budget. Then, a few years after that shift, when enough people had forgotten, he talked every chance he got about how fast and huge the state budget had grown, touting budget cuts once the economy cooled off. While many in the legislature warned that rebates and reduced taxes could come back to haunt the state if the economy soured, our current governor disagreed then and although that prophecy has come true, he's still touting the same line under extremely different circumstances.
Most voters have a short memory when it comes to politics. And most politicians depend on that.
Unless, of course, it involves something juicy like an extra-marital affair we forget quickly about things like tax shifts, accounting schemes and subtle semantics that lets us rename some taxes as fees and some fees as taxes. But one look at the state and nation's economy and we know the prosperous 1990s are over and now we have Tim Pawlenty in the Governor's mansion still whining about the size of government and carrying out his self-appointed job to save all of us from ourselves. Meanwhile we pay more in fees (the user tax) than ever before and if you live in rural Minnesota you either pay a lot more in property taxes, lost a number of public services or both. And if you haven't paid more yet, you will, because most rural communities exhausted ways to continue services while facing huge reductions in state aid.
Ask yourself, are you, an average Minnesotan, really paying fewer taxes and is the future of your state more solid than it was before Pawlenty and the "no new taxes mantra. Hardly. Adding insult to injury, the dollar we earn today buys much less than it did during the so-called "higher tax" years in the 90s. Back then we were told we were being taxed too much and that's why we had a surplus. Now, with deficits everywhere, no money for roads, schools or nursing homes, we're told we're taxed too much and that's why the economy is suffering. Either way works for our Governor; and either way, the state's average citizens lose.
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