Go Home
Raising Taxes is the Wrong Idea
 Tell the Governor: Do NOT Raise Taxes!

Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Early Tuesday, Governor Vilsack "put on the table" the issue of raising taxes to be able to spend additional dollars in the state budget.

Let's be clear: I strongly disagree with the governor. Do you?

If so, go online today and add your name to my "No Tax Increases" online petition. To add your name now, please visit: www.rants.us. Here is why this is so important:

A. A tax increase will destroy all the economic development efforts we made last year. Raising taxes will send exactly the wrong message to people and businesses looking to locate here and is the worst thing that can happen to our economy. From Sioux City, I look at neighboring tax–friendly South Dakota and see thousands of former Iowans working and raising families there. Raise taxes and we will see even more of our residents flood from Iowa.

B. The governor has been very good at throwing an idea out there and expecting the legislature to figure out the details (i.e. Vision Iowa, Teacher Compensation, Medicaid, The Iowa Values Fund…). The governor will have no help from our caucus in figuring out the details for this proposal.

C. The state should not take its focus off of economic development. If we raise taxes, that is exactly the message we will be sending.

If this is about providing more for health care or education, the governor should freeze state salaries, using the $84 million salary increase state employees are slated to receive, and instead pour that money into education and health care.

It is not right that while K–12 education sees a 2.5% cut in funding, the governor will not relinquish on the 6.5% increase in pay and benefits that he negotiated with the state unions. Under this governor, education is no longer priority number one – it has been eclipsed by state worker salaries.

With our proposal, not a single state worker would need to be laid off. They simply would not see the significant increase in their salary – much in the same as the rest of America's workers have not seen an increase in their salaries.

If the governor truly intends to raise taxes, he owes it to Iowans to let them know now whose taxes he is going to raise and by how much – and not do it on a Friday at 5 p.m.

ADD YOUR NAME NOW:www.rants.us – Send Governor Vilsack a message today! Forward this to your friends and family – tell them to sign up as well!

Christopher (Christopher@Rants.us)