Friday, 21 March 2008
If You Are Going To Break A Promise Might As Well Go All Out
Sometimes watching the Beshear administration can border on the surreal. Just a couple of days ago Beshear appeared before a group health advocates in the Capital Rotunda and again pitched his 70 cent per pack cigarette tax.
Gov. Steve Beshear called again yesterday for a 70-cent increase in Kentucky's cigarette tax, urging people to lobby their lawmakers if they agree. Advertisement
"I ask you to start talking as you've never talked before to your legislators," Beshear said to a cheering crowd of health advocates and others gathered in the Capitol Rotunda.
The call to arms is bizarre. He is asking to raise taxes three times more than his fellow Democrats in the house want to raise the tax.
"The House has made a good start," Beshear said of the 25-cent increase lawmakers have proposed in the House budget. "It's just not enough."
Why would you want to pick a fight with members of your own party over this issue? I guess if he is going to break a campaign promise he might as well do it in spectacular fashion. Of course the story gets stranger. Now it appears that Beshear is going to resurrect his casino bill to put pressure on the senate so they will agree to the tax hike.
Beshear says he's not trying to jump start the casino bill to use as leverage in trying to get the republican-led Senate to approve an increase in the cigarette tax.
I am at a loss over this logic. He doesn't even come close to having the votes to pass it out of the house, but this is going to some how magically put pressure on the senate? All it is going to do is highlight how ineffectual Beshear has been this session.
Fortunately for Kentuckians, it doesn't look like David Williams in the senate is going to break his promise not to raise taxes.
The budget is now before the Senate, where its president, David Williams, R-Burkesville, has said repeatedly he sees no sentiment for a tax increase.
The sad part of those whole sordid budget affair is the sheer incompetence. The Democrats bickered and fought like petulant kids over the budget and in the process took an extraordinary amount of time to pass it in the house. The Senate has no time to address the budget meaning it has little chance of being passed during the legislative session.
It appears that we will now be stuck with a special session to get done what the legislatures couldn't get done during the regular session.
