Wargotz takes the pledge

The subject today is a recent announcement from U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Eric Wargotz that he’s signing the Americans for Tax Reform pledge, vowing not to raise taxes. That part is good, but if you read through you’ll see where the announcement raises more questions for me than it answers.

Dr. Eric S. Wargotz, a candidate for the GOP nomination in Maryland’s 2010 U. S. Senate contest, has signed a pledge not to raise income taxes on citizens.

The pledge, a project of Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), extracts a written promise from legislators and candidate for office committing them to oppose any effort to increase marginal income tax rates on individuals and businesses. ATR was founded in 1985 by Grover Norquist at the request of President Reagan.

“I first ran for office because I believed fiscal responsibility was not a priority of Maryland’s Democratic establishment,” stated Dr. Wargotz. “As president of the Queen Anne’s County Board of Commissioners, my colleagues and I succeeded in lowering the property tax rate on citizens, reducing the size of government, and implementing reforms intended to enhance efficiencies and transparencies in government.

“Now, with multiple federal bailout plans having been enacted and a costly federal healthcare scheme on the table, I believe it is time to stand up for Maryland’s taxpayers again. I hope other senatorial candidates will sign the same promise I did.”

Additionally, Dr. Wargotz also addressed a meeting of Americans for Tax Reform in Washington, where he discussed his candidacy.

Dr. Wargotz is an experienced leader and activist, a physician-businessman, fiscal conservative, and environmentalist.  He understands what it takes to work as a team and to build consensus on difficult matters.

Eric is certainly correct that fiscal responsibility isn’t exactly Job One among Maryland Democrats (I’m thinking it’s about Job 63, if it rates that high) but I’m also a little troubled about another item I found in my research.

First of all, though, I checked and Wargotz was correct in stating that tax rates were reduced from a 2006 rate of 0.80 per $100 of valuation to 0.77 in 2007, where it remains. Yet the county misses an opportunity to reduce taxes further because the “constant yield” tax rate has dropped to 0.724 per $100 of valuation (look on Page 5 here.)

More troubling in the fiscal regard was Dr. Wargotz’s support of a living wage for employees of Queen Anne’s County. Granted, this only affects a small number of employees but it’s the camel’s nose under the tent. Would he support such a measure for the thousands of federal employees or, worse, place a mandate on the states to do so? Doing so would just shift the dirty work of increasing taxes from him to local and state legislators – I’m sure he’s grumbled many a time about state and federal mandates affecting how Queen Anne’s County operates, and my idea of a good Senator would be having one who reduces or eliminates as many mandates from on high as possible.

(Needless to say, I’d also love more clarification on “environmentalist” because one of their favorite tactics for conformity is a mandate from the federal or state government. They don’t even give the restrictions in place a chance to work before demanding more.)

On the whole I’m glad Eric is vowing not to raise taxes – and he’s certainly promising to be an improvement over the Senator we now have – but I want the same effort placed in reducing the size of government too.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer.

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