I did this post three years ago, The First Rule of Holes: When you’re in one, stop digging!, but apparently we need to revisit this rule because of Tea-Publicans in the Arizona legislature:
Arizona has a structural revenue deficit due to annual tax cuts since 1992. As I explained the other day:
This is how the anti-government, anti-public education, anti-tax GOP game is played: in each legislature since Prop. 108 was enacted in 1992, the legislature has enacted tax rate cuts and/or special interest tax exemptions and tax credits. This has had the intended effect of reducing tax revenues, creating a structural revenue deficit which results in a budget deficit. Because raising tax revenues is always off the table in the ideological GOP, the legislature takes out its meat axe and cuts the budget to essential state services like public education, health care and infrastructure (primarily roads).
Budget crises are not a bug but a feature for the Arizona GOP. They are in no way serious about resolving Arizona’s structural revenue deficit.