Rage against the machine

Editor’s note 5/27/2022: I have brought this home from the dead Examiner.com pages.

As I wrote Sunday, the Maryland General Assembly holds a Special Session beginning next Monday to address what Martin O’Malley and majority Democrats consider a revenue shortfall in the FY2013 budget. Despite the fact a budget was passed during the regular session, the $700 million increase wasn’t to the liking of educators, unions, and others who were expecting another $500 million or so in the budget to address their wish list.

While Republicans won’t have the votes needed to stop any tax proposal put forth by O’Malley and his Democratic allies, they can use the occasion as a cudgel to spread their message of fiscal responsibility. On Monday evening a planned rally will give voice to the opposition message that increasing taxes is the wrong solution to a budgetary problem that doesn’t even exist.

Sponsored by the House of Delegates’ TEA Party Caucus, the ‘Rally Against the Doomsday Session’ at Lawyers Mall will commence at 7 p.m. and last about two hours. Presumably several members of the Caucus will rally the troops against the proposed tax increases, which will begin to take shape that day once the Special Session gets underway.

Conventional wisdom holds that the leading new revenue stream will be an increase in the income tax for wealthy Maryland residents, but O’Malley and General Assembly Democrats have also floated the ideas of an increased gasoline tax, raising the sales tax, and expanding sales taxes to more services as possibilities, too. Any or all of these could be in play next Monday, along with unfinished business from the regular session on how to spend any additional revenue. It’s worth recalling that while the 2007 Special Session called by Martin O’Malley in his first term led to the largest tax increase in Maryland history, millions in new spending was also enacted during that meeting of the General Assembly.

It’s more than likely the TEA Party rally won’t be as large as the 2011 union-led rally encouraging the state to spend more money, but those who show won’t be getting the free meals or other incentives Big Labor passed out for attendees. Instead, their payoff will likely come in two years as TEA Partiers create a campaign issue of the “tax and spend” attitude pervasive in Annapolis.