To avoid what's called the "doomsday" budget - involving a lot of draconian austerity cuts to programs and services, the Maryland State Legislature is holding a special session to pass a budget.
The problem Maryland has, like so many other states, is despite living in an era of historic record corporate profits, the state doesn't have enough revenue coming in, and expenses on everything are increasing.
So that means one of two things, finding new revenue streams (taxation) or cutting services (austerity). The problem, of course, is that many people don't want to pay any taxes, let alone more, and they also want keep their services and programs they depend, thank you very much.
So to close the gap, the legislature has arranged a compromise, of sorts.
It will raise some taxes, and shed some expenses, and here's how it proposes to do so.
Maryland will raise income taxes on the state's top 14% wealthiest people. And it will also pass off the costs of teacher pensions to the counties (more of a pass the buck measure than a solution, but technically, the state is cutting costs).
And while the tax increase is expected to pass, Democrats from Montgomery County (where many of the states richest residents reside) proposed something different - something nastier.
Instead of raising taxes on Maryland's wealthy, they would prefer to tax Maryland's poor via an increase in the sales tax - a regressive tax that places the fiscal burden on the poor. Anyone proposing a sales tax is, by definition, proposing increasing taxes on the poor.
These are the Montgomery Co. Democrats who would prefer to tax the poor instead of taxing their richer residents:
Del. Charles Barkley
Del. Benjamin F. Kramer
Del. Sam Arora
This proposal would raise the state's sales tax to 7% and make it the highest in the mid-Atlantic region.
To their credit, Republicans in the state legislature are opposed to the measure, but to be fair, they are opposed to all of the Democratic majority's proposals.
Source.
