Gov. Bush proposes tax cut for wealthy, $1 billion more to schools

[Judi Lynn]

Gov. Bush proposes tax cut for wealthy, $1 billion more to schools

By Linda Kleindienst and Mark Hollis
Tallahassee Bureau
Posted January 21 2004

TALLAHASSEE -- Gov. Jeb Bush unveiled a $55.4 billion state spending plan on Tuesday that cuts taxes for Florida's wealthiest residents and businesses while hitting students with higher tuition costs and leaving thousands of children and elderly on waiting lists for state services.

Buoyed by a rebounding economy, the Republican governor called on state legislators to reinstate the popular sales tax shopping holiday and start a three-year phase-out of the state tax on stock and bond holdings.

"Lowering taxes spurs investment and growth in Florida," said Bush, who since taking office in 1999 has championed $8.2 billion in tax relief.

"Florida continues to lead the nation in job growth, creating 97,000 new jobs in the last 12 months ... and the people in those jobs give less of their money to fund state government than at any time in the last decade."
(snip/...)

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/florida/sfl-fbudget21xjan21,0,4845404.story?coll=sfla-news-florida

[DarkSim]

1. That ass....

How can he do such a thing. I'm moving to the moon!

[bluedeminredstate]

2. A preview of the Jeb presidency

How can people support this freak? Class warfare is alive and well in Florida. :puke:

[seasat]

3. I especially am po'ed at this point.

from article:

Much of the increased spending would be fueled by a $700 million raid on state trust funds. The funds are set up to ensure operating costs for certain programs are covered. Surpluses, according to many, should go toward expansion and enrichment of those programs, but no law forbids diverting extra money for other uses.


Jebbie's idea of "spurring investment" in Florida is to increase development and cut taxes for wealthy retirees to come to the state. This results in an increase in jobs...low wage service sector jobs! At the same time this ignorant policy of his is not sustainable. It relies on the limited resource of land and a steady growth in the population of the elderly. The increase in population along the coast also degrades the environment, which is one of the qualities that attracts most people to Florida in the first place. We will eventually end up a state full of retirees with low wage service jobs to take care of them.

The only reason Jebbie is increasing funds to education is because we passed an amendment to force him to reduce class sizes. Education is dismal here in FL. The public schools are underfunded and Jebbie is pouring money into privatizing education with no oversight. The result has been a number of scandals where outright fraud was committed by companies receiving this money and 100's of millions have probably been lost. We also have no idea if we are getting our money's worth out of his privatizing schemes since there is no oversight or testing of the students shuttled off to the private schools.

If Jebbie really gave a damn about Florida's people he would adequately fund public education and support new businesses such as renewable energy sources (we are the state of perpetual sunshine). Jebbie however continues to pursue his radical neocon agenda with a religious furor that it must be right and stifles most information that would indicate its failings. I never lived in a state where a single party (that achieved part of its dominance through gerrymandering the election districts) was so out of touch with the will of the people.


:mad:

[mbperrin]

11. Is it true that 12th grade is now optional in Florida?

I'm not at all trying to be funny, someone told me this,and I thought, surely this can't be?

[nayt]

12. almost

the credit requirements were lowered so that now most high school seniors only need to take 1 or 2 classes. i don't know of anyone who completely skipped the 12th grade though.

[seasat]

13. Man, y'all don't get me started on Jebbie and education.

My wife is a teacher here in Florida and I've been following his wrecking of our system for years. Here are a few recent examples.

Florida has program where the tiny corporate income tax (most companies in Florida don't actually pay this due to huge loopholes) can be credited by donating the money to a school voucher "charity".

From Naples Daily:

FloridaChild, the state's largest distributor of corporate-funded private school scholarships, is getting out of the business, citing uncertainty in how much money is available each year.

The Miami-based organization, which is facing state investigation, collects donations from corporations, which then pay for private school tuition for poor children. The corporations get state tax breaks.

Florida Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher has threatened an investigation of FloridaChild, saying that it charged families fees to get the scholarships, solicited money from schools that wanted to accept voucher students and had other "irregularities" in how it did business.

And from the Palm Beach Post:

Voucher schools in Florida benefit from a double standard written into law. Unlike public schools, they don't have to give tests or be financially accountable. It's wrong, but it's the law. In contrast, state legislators broke the law to enshrine a double standard for virtual schools. Their new double standard shortchanged 63,000 children.

The virtual school experimental program allows two private companies to offer online courses to 1,000 public school students. At $4,800 per student, they were supposed to save the state $700 a head. As with voucher schools, mismanagement by Education Commissioner Jim Horne has encouraged abuses.

Lawmakers attached an important safeguard to virtual schools. Home-schoolers aren't entitled to state money. If they snapped up the virtual vouchers, the program would drain the budget rather than pad it. So lawmakers stipulated that "eligibility is limited to students who were enrolled and in attendance at a Florida public school... during the prior school year."

That's where Mr. Horne decided to break the law. He permitted virtual schools to sign up 227 students who had not been in public school. When that illegal decision became public, Mr. Horne declared that he wouldn't make the companies pay back the $1 million and wouldn't force the 227 students to "leave" the virtual schools. (Republican insider William Bennett owns one of the schools.) Instead, Mr. Horne looked for a way to make the public pay for his mistake, and this month, GOP lawmakers on the Legislative Budget Commission -- which makes midyear budget corrections -- let him get away with it.


But since our state is so flush with money due to Bush tax cuts we can throw money away.

From Palm Beach Post:

Florida's governor and lawmakers do not care much about low-income, uninsured children.

In case parents of the 63,000 children on a waiting list for the state's child health insurance program did not understand that last year, when the Legislature froze enrollment in Florida KidCare, Republican lawmakers said it again last week by putting $413 million in reserves instead of voting to use $23 million to provide doctors for at least 47,000 children.

A West Palm Beach woman whose youngest child went to the doctor every week for his first year of life, had heart surgery at age 2 and has chronic asthma is among those parents "praying about it and crying about it," scared each day the 6-year-old goes without coverage.

I got all these articles from:

WhoseFlorida

note: I'm not affiliated with the site but I really think they do a great job of linking to relevant news articles for Floridians.

[nayt]

14. oops

[pfitz59]

4. Hidden taxation..user fees....

College tuition. Park entrance fees. Hunting licenses..etc... Govt-owned parks/schools/public lands will be cash-starved. Jeb will say "must be surplus!". Said govt property will be sold to Jeb's friends, further entrenching the aristocracy! THIS is the hidden agenda! Drive up public debt to force a fire-sale of public assets! Pretty damned sneaky!

[philosophie_en_rose]

5. He's freaking not lowering g-d taxes!

I hate the moronic idea that lowering taxes equals having more money or more choices. Having to pay for higher tuition or "public" parks, having no law enforcement to respond to accidents, having shitty classrooms and "corporate" school districts, dying from lack of health options -- how much are those cuts really worth?

It's the same in Washington and California. Tim Eyman and Ahnold seduce morans to vote for ridiculous initiatives that cripple the state. $30 car tabs are nice when your writing a check at the DMV, but there's a connection between the $200 "savings" and having to replace the tires you wore down and the valuable time spent waiting on the shitty, crowded roads. Not to mention the cuts in mental health care facilities, low-cost housing, and other social services.

[rightontarget]

6. I don't understand how it is a tax cut for the wealthiest residents.

You cut taxes. People who pay taxes, pay less. People with more income pay more taxes. Hence, you cut taxes and the people paying more taxes get the bigger tax break total dollar wise. If you don't pay taxes you don't benefit from a tax cut. So tax cuts aren't aimed at the wealthier people it just happens that the get more back, because they put more in.

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[seasat]

9. Because your Assumption is completely false.

You're assuming that the tax cut in intangible tax means that the poor will get a break. The deductible levels before Jebbie's earlier reductions in taxes meant that no one but the wealthiest paid any of the intangible tax. Jebbie has allowed taxes that affect the poor to increase. We've had increases in local option sales taxes. The continued sprawl his growth at all costs have inflicted on FL have increased property values so that the poor and middle class pay more property taxes. Florida relies heavily on sales tax as the primary source of revenue yet Jebbie has put in deductions that primarily benefit the wealthiest. An example is exempting air craft parts from sales tax but the poor has to pay taxes on auto parts at Auto Zone. The wealthiest in FL not only get a larger cut in total dollars but pay a lower effective tax rate. The state and local effective tax rates in Florida are 14.4% for the bottom 20% in income, 9.8% for the middle 20%, and 2.7% for the top 1%. (Source for Tax Info) This is great if you are a wealthy retiree but lousy if you are a young couple trying to get started off in life, a single mother abandoned by her husband, or a retiree living only off Social Security.

A true Democrat believes that an individual should only be taxed on the income that they do not need for basic necessities. Our tax code used to be based on that belief but the neocon agenda has brainwashed people into thinking that taxes should be flat across the board. The result has been a dramatic increase in income at the top levels, a flattened growth in income in the middle levels, and a decline in income at the bottom. This lowers economic upper mobility in society and creates a static layer of wealthy at the top. Jebbie doesn't care about this since he is a member of that group by birth and wishes to preserve his own cliche. The end result is a polarized society with a wide gap between the haves and have nots with little innovation or competition in the economy. In other words, we may look like some of those countries in S. America that are governed by dictators after a few decades.

[tom_paine]

8. Jeb's just doing what the Imperials always do

Stealinmg, defrauding, banrupting the legislative part of government so that the Emperor and the Imperial Gouvernors can rule the Provinces directly.

[TahitiNut]

10. Whyizzit ...

... that the plutocratic reichbots chant the litany of "Lowering taxes spurs investment" when arguing that wealth has some holy right to more wealth ... but NEVER say "Lowering taxes spurs labor"???

If investment of wealth, the net realized income from which is already taxed at a far lower rate than labor, is incentivized by lowering the tax rate even further ... then why not lower the tax rate on earned income to incentivize people to work? Indeed, wouldn't it raise net income and offset compensation demands? Wouldn't employers like this?

I guess not. After all, we don't tax the income from labor in India, Mexico, China, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Taiwan, ... :eyes:

Why is it that people who work for a living are supposed to make the wealthy even wealthier? Why do the wealthy have a greater right to become wealthier than the other 99%?