That was the title of a news release recently from the Maryland Republican Party, a release that detailed the 37 different tax increases proposed from a total of 33 bills (including crossfilings) introduced in this year’s General Assembly session. While most of these bills are introduced, get a hearing, then disappear, the sheer fact that so many ideas for revenue enhancement were placed in the hopper just months after a special session that raised billions in new taxes came to a conclusion tells me that there are a lot of people in the majority party of our General Assembly that won’t be satisfied until they’ve squeezed every last drop of revenue from those of us who actually work in order to redistribute wealth to those who can’t or won’t.
When the state’s budget also increases at a rate faster than inflation, what this tells me is that Democrats in Maryland are more than living up to their national reputation as a tax-and-spend party. Throw in a number of egregious attempts at curtailing our liberties such as increasing development buffer zones to 300 feet and it’s no wonder the state’s not growing in population as much as it could were it a more business-friendly one.
The one thing I do like about reports like the one the Maryland GOP compiled is that we on the side of conservatism can keep this in our memory division and hopefully remind voters the next time elections roll around just how much those in the Annapolis majority are reaching into our wallets and affecting our own back yards.
This also gives me the opportunity to tell my readers that over the next few weeks I’m going to take up the slack of the Maryland Accessibility Project to some extent and develop my own legislative scorecard based on the voting record for bills I’ve done with my Legislative Checkups, followed with other separate posts, or brought up by readers and, in this case, the Maryland Republican Party. It might take awhile to figure out 188 people and their voting records but I think it’s a worthwhile endeavor – besides I dig that sort of research for some crazy reason.
I’m hoping I can have this guide finished by the end of May or so, but it depends on a lot of other factors too – not the least of them my schedule otherwise. Today was a day I almost missed because of other activities I needed to get through, but I made it just in time.
