Raising Taxes To Stop Tax Increases

The Sacramento Bee's, Dan Weintraub, is one of my favorite political writers. I think he's a bit naive, at times, though. In today's commentary he suggests the Republicans might be wise to accept a tax increase now, thus avoiding a similar tax increase in the future. He cites Rob Reiner's proposed pre school initiative, which would increase taxes on the wealthy, just as Dan suggests the Republicans ought to accept. His thinking seems to be that if the taxes are raised before the next election, the pre school initiative won't get passed by voters.

I don't see how he can think that as we just passed a new tax on the "rich" to fund all that mental health crap in the last election. Now we're talking about doing it again. If the Republicans go along with an early tax increase, Reiner's tax increase might likely pass whether or not the Republicans cooperate and a year or two from now Reiner and the Democrats will propose even more tax increases.

Of course, Weintraub qualifies his proposal by saying the Democrats must accept some spending "reforms" in return for the tax increases. Most important would be a spending limitation agreement. Nice thought but any "limitations" the Democrats agreed to would likely not be any kind of spending limitation at all. They'd likely be just cosmetic fixes as that's usually what happens in Sacramento.

Nope, the best way to avoid new taxes is to simply not pass any new taxes.