It’s on
Jun 30th, 2009 by David Anderson
In his inaugural speech, Lt. Governor Matt Denn blasted the late President Reagan for encouraging people to hold their government responsible results. He called for sacrifices of us but not from the governing class. That was a signal of what was to come– taxes, taxes, and more fees.
The Democrats in the Delaware General Assembly had to accept the concept of sunset clauses to many of their tax bills in order to avoid a government shut down. Even then they voted down 1 year sunsets and voted in 4 year sunsets. This allowed them to get 1 republican vote so they could get their super majority. We have hundreds of millions in tax increases and tens of millions more in fee increases. Death taxes, income taxes, gross receipts taxes, cigarette taxes, and fees on practically everything are going up. If you get too depressed about it, and go drinking (not recommended) you had better hurry because that will be taxed too as soon as they can get one more vote. The only other thing left on the table are certain corporate taxes that take a 2/3 majority.
Democrats had to agree to cutting the state workforce by another 2% through attrition. There is no early retirement so far. There is no reform of the purchasing system that is losing us $200,000,000 a year which happens to equal the income tax hike. Various posts here have shown savings of over $300,000,000 which could be achieved before cutting a single service or laying off one person. The irresponsibility of funding the addiction instead seeking treatment has to stop. The sad fact is that it will not stop without some tax fighting reformers in legislative hall.
When the choice was between reforming government or taxing the people, the Democrats choose taxing the people. They couldn’t be persuaded to give the little guy a break even though he was hurting any more than a shark could be persuaded not to go after a bleeding fish. They should be ashamed. All I can say is that it is on. It is time to retake the house. 5 to survive in 2010.
David: “There is no reform of the purchasing system that is losing us $200,000,000 a year which happens to equal the income tax hike. Various posts here have shown savings of over $300,000,000 which could be achieved before cutting a single service or laying off one person. “
David, you post so much that I have trouble keeping up with all of it. Could you, in two sentences, tell me about reforming the purchasing system, and about savings that could be achieved without cutting a single service or laying off one person?
In his inaugural speech, Lt. Governor Matt Denn blasted the late President Reagan for encouraging people to hold their government responsible results.
I know Denn’s speech is not published and you are taking advantage of that fact to make stuff up. But please David, try a little harder to make sense.
Reagan deserves some blasting, but honestly I have no idea what you are talking about here. What does this even mean, “hold their government responsible results?” and what does it have to do with Matt Denn?
He called for sacrifices of us but not from the governing class.
Sacrifices of us? Human sacrifice on The Green?
On the other hand, you may be right; they rejected the millionaire’s tax last night… so thanks to Republicans, the governing class got off the hook again.
Please feel free to browse the budget archives. There are 27 posts over there. I think there is a reason that Lt. Denn choose not to publish his speech. I think he realized from the reaction how radical it sounded. The Governor’s sacrifice speech was a lot more noble and bipartisan.
David: “Please feel free to browse the budget archives. “
David, so you can’t give us a two sentence summary. Your political future will suffer if you cannot communicate an idea succinctly, because people will just shut you off. You can always produce the details to those who really want to dig in to your viewpoint.
At this moment, I do not accept your claims mentioned in my #1, and I doubt there are many who do!
“they rejected the millionaire’s tax last night… so thanks to Republicans, the governing class got off the hook again.”
Such a tax was not offered, and therefore was not rejected.
“I know Denn’s speech is not published and you are taking advantage of that fact to make stuff up.”
Denn’s criticism was of Reagan’s “are you better off today than you were 4 years ago” quote. DA’s not too far off with his statement.
“David, so you can’t give us a two sentence summary.”
I’ll give you one: Learn the difference between a check and a credit card. There ya go, $100 million.
http://www.delawarepolitics.net/dfms-should-be-a-four-letter-word-put-another-100m-in-the-cup/
I already gave a two sentence summary in the post that you commented upon, my friend. You don’t need a two sentence summary, you need context to understand it. So here is one of the links. I don’t blame you. We spend well over 100 million on excess checks to the same vendor each month. We spend another 100 million in credit card fees which may actually save us money because it costs us $50 per check. A normal financial management system would save us $200,000,000.
A normal financial management system would save us $200,000,000.
David - you are like that annoying kid in the back seat going every five minutes Are we there yet? Are we there yet???
The Delaware Financial Management System has been shown to be highly inefficient to say the least. It may very well be siphoning 10% of our tax money through its inefficiencies. Its inability to pay vendors in a timely, but quick system is costing us more in fees. Its incomprehensibility is costing us unnecessary paperwork. Learning the system is like learning a foreign language. Its bulky nature is forcing workers to do expensive work arounds. Its inefficient structure is so burdensome that the cost of writing a check is estimated to be $50 by comparison it is $6 or less in the private sector. The dealings with vendors alone have been documented to cost $200,000,000.00 a year by the Wilmington News Journal. A patch on the vendor portion was suggested in 2004 and it will not go live until 2010. That is 1.2 billion dollars tossed away,
A financial management system is designed to save money not cost more money. This system has literally cost us Billions of dollars. DFMS is Bernie Madoff of financial accounting. The best budget reform legislation that anyone could introduce would be a joint resolution to establish a commission to find a new financial management system. Whenever I hear a hybrid approach being discussed, I get concerned. Let’s study this and see if we can go world class instead of poverty class.
perry and noman have decended to troll level in there constant and predictable refrain.
Anybody who can be okay with blowing hundreds of millions of dollars a year while we wait for the solution can not be taken seriously.
Sorry, wrong dave and wrong post. feel free to delete #11
I’ll repost it where it belongs.
It will be fun when the national economic recovery comes to Delaware and you guys have to decide whether you are going to give credit to Markell or Obama.
My bet is you will figure out some delusional way to give credit to Republicans just like you did in the 1990s.
I think it is fair to knock the Republican leadership here. I am not pinning them for profiles of courage. The fact is that they said the people elected these guys with 60 plus percent of the vote. They can have their agenda, but let’s sunset it and give the people a second chance.
It is only reality that the Democrats own this. They would not support the Republican compromises. They even voted down a one year sunset. They run the Governors office, the Senate, and the House. They set the agenda. The Republicans only had two choices, extract a sunset which puts this issue back to the voters or just obstruct and shut down the government. I would have done the latter and forced dealing with this crazy waste like it is a fire not with the Noman attitude that we will take care of some of it when we get to it. After 5 years and over a billion dollars, yes I am impatient. We have part of the solution already. BTW I would not put Perry and Noman in the same category. Noman is great entertainment; Perry is actually trying to grapple for answers.
When Republicans controlled the House, taxes went down. As soon as the Democrats control, taxes go up.
If we want to change that, we need to get some good fiscal hawks. If the party leadership won’t find them in their search committees then we must and force primaries. We need to take back these lost seats. My friend there really is a pony under there. We can reverse this. Now there is a clear choice.
annoni: “perry and noman have decended to troll level in there constant and predictable refrain.”
What you radical Repubs fail to understand is that there is a bigger picture here than just your ideological focused hang-up about lowering taxes. I’ve addressed that bigger picture, so have you annoni, and so does noman all the time.
As I see it, the GA Repubs have compromised temporarily to keep our state running. That’s good!
All I am saying is that the effort to cut costs and minimize tax increases has to strive for the fair sharing of pain with a progressive approach in mind. This includes an emphasis on preservation of jobs, both in the public and private sector.
For the part that you aim at eliminating waste, like the “$50 checks” and the “difference between a check and a credit card”, who could possibly disagree with you on that. But again, there is a bigger picture!
I agree with most of what you said. I just believe that those details are now threatening to derail the big picture. We are wasting 1.2 billion dollars since we’ve known that there is a problem. We can hire a dozen people and pay the bills in a consolidated way to save an hundred million dollars while we wait. We can speed the people soft fix and save 200 million. Why raise taxes for 4 years and slam our economy?
That is irresponsibility on a scale that perplexes me. It is at such a scale that it hurts economic growth. We can no longer afford it. When our senior centers are cutting back hours, please explain to them that it was more important that we spend our money in waste and bank fees. That is the big picture.
I am 71 Years old and have voted since I was old enough . I now think all Politicians are corrapt. Once they get into office they forget how they got there and who put there faith in them to do the right thing. All they want is power, and higher taxes so that they can buy more votes with tax payers money. This country needs term limits. this will stop some of foolish problems that we now have because of both partys
I am 71 Years old and have voted since I was old enough . I now think all Politicians are corrapt.
Maybe you voted for the wrong people.