Taxes down, people outraged

Congratulations! Tax Freedom Day has come and gone, and you may not have even noticed. You and I and everyone else that works and pays taxes, have been working for nearly four months to pay for our government.

This year, here in Wisconsin we had to work until April 21 to pay for our federal, state, and local governments, for the services they provide. Now we are finally working for ourselves.

Well, maybe.

Like all things in life, there is good news and bad news.

The good news is that Wisconsin improved three spots since last year. Now we’re ahead of our neighbors in Illinois and Minnesota. Yeah!

The bad news is even though we improved three spots over last year, the people in 40 other states have their tax freedom day before ours. Also, our tax freedom day is five days later this year than it was last year.

And it only gets worse.

According to the Tax Foundation, due to increased federal taxes, next year, Tax Freedom Day will come 11 days later than it did this year. This is because the Obama administration is going to raise our taxes to the tune of nearly $500 billion dollars. This doesn’t take into account the fact that our federal government is borrowing four out of every ten dollars they spend, more than a trillion dollars a year.

Think this tax increase will only cost the rich?

Think again.

According to Heritage’s Curtis Dubay, American households can expect an average tax increase of $3,800 and that 70 percent of this tax hike’s impact will fall directly on low-income and middle-income families.

You might be wondering, why did Wisconsin improve while our neighbors got worse? The short answer is leadership.

In Wisconsin, we made the right choices, and they were the tough choices because that’s what is required when a difficult problem must be solved. We took a $3.6 billion dollar deficit, created by the reckless spending habits of the Democrats and turned it into a surplus, without raising taxes or fees. Now that is quite an accomplishment.

As a result, of the hard work of the Republican lead legislature for the first time in a dozen years, our property taxes have actually gone down. And, for our troubles, a couple of rounds of recall elections, do over elections because some didn’t like what was done.

So taxpayers in Wisconsin can pay about $20 million dollars for the recall primary and general election. That’s money that could have been used to do good things for people.

What were you doing 12 years ago? Twelve years ago the World Trade Center was still standing. Twelve years ago, Donald Driver was entering his second season as a Packer’s wide receiver and Brett Favre was leading the Packers. And, that was the last time your property taxes went down. My time flies. Thank goodness the Democrats aren’t in charge anymore. If they were in charge your taxes would be going up (last session when they were in charge they raised taxes and fees by more than $5 billion and left us with a $3.6 billion dollar deficit. If they get in charge, they’ll do it again.)

Did you know that Tax Freedom Day should be even later than it is? If the federal government raised taxes enough to close the budget deficit — an additional $1 trillion — Tax Freedom Day would come on May 18 instead of April 21. That’s almost half of all your money going to Uncle Sam. This doesn’t include the hidden health insurance premium tax (more on this in the future).

It gets even worse, if you incorporate the debt we’ve already accumulated.

One thing is clear; politicians in Washington are addicted to spending our money. It’s never a good idea to give addicts money, let’s face it; they’re not going to spend it wisely.

It’s common sense that you can’t consume more than you create; we need politicians in Washington to understand that, like we do here in Wisconsin.

The federal government has to get their act together and stop robbing us, our kids and future generations. We must stop spending our money and their money.

We should be striving to leave a better country to our kids, not spend their inheritance today and then some more tomorrow.

I look forward to hearing from you about the issues of concern to you. Please feel free to contact me, Sen.Lasee@legis.wisconsin.gov or (608) 266-3512. If you are planning to be in Madison, I look forward to seeing you at the Capitol.

State Sen. Frank Lasee is a Republican from De Pere, Wis.

Tags: opinion, editorial, money