Arizona’s Budget Crisis in a Nutshell

By Michael Bryan

 Let's make this simple. The budget crisis proves that the Arizona GOP is unfit to govern. Here's why.

Arizona's GOP majority permanently cut taxes (mostly for the wealthy and corporations, and mostly without any minority party support) during a decade-long economic bubble based on the specious premise that the resulting revenue surpluses were permanent. 

They cut the maximum size of the budget stabilization fund so the state couldn't save the surpluses and they'd have an excuse to cut revenues still further.

Now that the economy has slowed down, they have run the state's deficit so far into the red that it is literally impossible to balance the budgets in coming years based on cuts alone. You can shut down the universities and prisons and fire every state employee and still not close that gap.

However, increasing taxes requires a supermajority, meaning that a tiny minority can block any increases. And some of the zealots in the GOP caucus surely will.

So, realizing that they are going to need additional revenue to run the state and that their own colleagues haven't the cojones to raise taxes, Republicans now propose to maybe ask the voters to temporarily raise the rate of the most regressive tax, and the one that most negatively affects economic growth, the sales tax, in order to (presumably) temporarily balance the budget.

Riiiight, that's going to work…

Arizona's budget crisis (which is, by far, the worst in the nation at 41% deficit) was caused by the political myopia and zeal of the GOP. And now, the political myopia and zeal of the GOP keeps them from actually addressing the problem in any sort of rational and responsible manner.

Somebody tell me how an group of people so clearly inept at their jobs are able to keep them year after year? There's something deeply wrong with our political system that it will tolerate this ideologically-inspired fiscal suicide pact among the governing majority.