By Dan Carpenter TheStatehouseFile.com
INDIANAPOLIS – You can call it a mountain laboring to give birth to a mouse: weeks of posturing and parrying over a “signature†tax proposal that only slightly turns the screws of a failed status quo.
Dan Carpenter is a columnist for TheStatehouseFile.com and the author of “Indiana Out Loud.â€
You can call it an affirmation of Einstein’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting – or promising – a different result.
Either way, the Great Business Tax Cut Showdown appears to have resolved itself pretty much in keeping with the rest of the results of the 2014 Indiana General Assembly session – with lots of room for relief and self-congratulation on both sides and little of substance accomplished for a state in dire need of some economic democracy.
The compromise that Gov. Mike Pence has indicated readiness to accept phases in the reduction of an already ludicrously low corporate tax rate, with options for local government entities to decide on personal property tax cuts — and supposedly, insulation against an estimated $1 billion hit to budgets that already can’t fix streets and pay police and teachers.
Whether the $1 billion figure is accurate, the loss would be real money, as distinct from the billions in new investment and job creation for which Indiana’s serial gifts to the top echelons have consistently left us waiting.
Cut corporate taxes, eliminate the inheritance tax, cripple collective bargaining, shovel contracts and subsidies into every scheme that comes from the well-connected, and voila! The Pence-Daniels-Bosma miracle, envy of Illinois, a businessman’s paradise with high unemployment, high poverty, low buying power, poor health, a sickly environment and municipalities on life support.
Einstein’s definition of insanity. It shouldn’t take a genius.
When one is governed by men whose imagination begins and ends with privilege and partisanship, one learns to be thankful for anticlimax.
No chance for marriage equality in Indiana, unless and until the federal courts intervene; but at least the law is unlikely now to be reinforced by a constitutional amendment. A pathetically timid preschool pilot, but at least the Trojan horse of voucher expansion got removed from it.
Mass transit for Central Indiana that may have to have bake sales and car washes to pay the fare, but at least it’s out of the station.
Egregious, probably unconstitutional, religion-based restrictions on insurance coverage for abortion; but with loopholes through which a woman may pursue her rights.
Guns in schools, if locked in the trunk. They’re already there, of course; but the National Rifle Association needs a token of love every year.
For the most part, it’s a good thing that big ideas are not the forte of this big GOP majority. The entire education and criminal justice systems might be run by the Walton family by now.
On the other hand, we’d have health care for roughly 400,000 low-income Hoosiers – at Washington’s expense – if fear of administrative adventure and Barack Obama weren’t keeping our governor from pulling the trigger as our “backward†cousins in Kentucky happily have done. And if we wanted to inject fuel into the economy where the tanks are empty, the legislature could raise the minimum wage. That’s an area where, not so long ago, we actually were ahead of Washington, with both parties on board.
Oh well. We got God and guns as usual, but not too much of either. Pretty light on the guts as well, which, by the standards we progressives set for this Statehouse, makes us three for three.
Dan Carpenter is a freelance writer, a contributor to Indianapolis Business Journal and the author of “Indiana Out Loud.â€
I wonder why no one has mentioned eliminating the State tax on public and private pensions like Kentucky has so the trickle down and the trickle up can someday possibly meet in the middle.
“…, with options for local government entities to decide on personal property tax cuts — …” (Dan Carpenter)
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It is not as if Indianapolis and the doughnut counties surrounding it do not already receive a disproportionate share of the businesses coming into the State, under this “phase-out” scenario of personal property taxes, the Indianapolis metroplex will again be the big winner.
http://www.ibrc.indiana.edu/iib/08312001.htm
Indianapolis, having a greater variety of taxes available to the IMSD then say Ft Wayne, South Bend, or Evansville, along with its growing population, is much better situated to eliminate the personal property tax. It is really quite a coup for the Indy area legislators.
The other cities I mentioned face a different sort of reality. In order to compete for those incoming businesses they will also be forced to eliminate the personal property tax.
So who out there could not have seen this classic David versus Goliath contest coming as a result a result of this legislation? It is extremely difficult to win any battles like this one when the only supplier of rocks is the General Assembly.
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Another legislative session wasted. Carpenter gave a pretty good summary of that. Our state legislators do not live in the real world and, by the way, the real world is not Indy and its donut counties although they believe it is. This session in particular was embarrassing. Makes me cringe.
Thanks for a good round-up, Dan
As Will Rogers said, “Never blame a legislative body for not doing something. When they do nothing, that don’t hurt anybody. When they do something is when they become dangerous.”
Works the same for the legislature in Indy or Urbana.
The StatehouseFile: last bastion for washed up liberals in Indiana.
The more I read their crap, the more I like Abdul.
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