Corporate welfare tax give-away plan defeated in Arizona Senate (for now)

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

For those of you concerned that the GOP insane clown posse of the Arizona Legislature will simply use the one cent sales tax increase on the ballot in the May special election to pay for the corporate welfare tax-giveaway plan of House Speaker Kirk Adams (R-Mesa), Monday brought a bit of good news (for now). Senate sinks plan for business tax cuts:

Senate Republicans drove the final nail Monday into a House-passed package of tax cuts for business.

Several members of the GOP caucus said they could not go along with a package to sharply cut corporate income taxes, phase out the state property tax and give other breaks to businesses. The plan, as approved earlier this year by the House, eventually would have slashed state revenues by $950 million a year.

A compromise offered by House Speaker Kirk Adams, R-Mesa, to trim the package to $600 million and delay the effective date of some of the cuts proved no more acceptable.

With Democrats balking, the failure of Senate Republicans to line up behind the package means it is dead — at least in its current form.

But Adams told Capitol Media Services Monday night he is not giving up. In fact, he and Burns were scheduled to meet late Monday to see what can be salvaged.

It ain't over until sine die. And last week Gov. Jan Brewer released her own much smaller tax-cut plan. Its pricetag, when fully implemented, was just $47 million. Brewer is not likely to sign a larger corporate tax cut package.

House Speaker Kirk Adams is "Captain Kool-Aid" when it comes to supply-side "trickle down" GOP economics. "Adams said the state has no choice but to cut taxes — and soon." Wrong answer. It is mindless GOP supply-side tax cuts over 20 years which created the structural deficit in Arizona's revenue base, and "Captain Kool-Aid" wants to make that structural deficit even worse.

Senate President Bob Burns, R-Peoria, said businesses are less concerned with tax cuts and more concerned with seeing how Arizona plans to resolve its deficit.

In fact, the only reason the budget adopted for the coming year is “balanced” is that it’s built on the assumption voters will approve a temporary one-cent hike in sales taxes in May and two other ballot measure in November to divert other cash. If any — or all — fail, then the spending plan is out of whack.

As we have predicted here, this is exactly what is going to happen. Voters are not going to repeal programs they previously approved to safeguard them from the legislature. The GOP insane clown posse, all of whom will hopefully be thrown out of office in November when they are held accountable by voters for their gross incompetence, fiscal irresponsibility, and turning Arizona into the laughingstock of the nation with their wingnuttery, will try to call a lame duck special session after the election so they can take a chainsaw to programs to balance the state budget before they leave office. This should be resisted by the citizens of Arizona. If anything, we will need an emergency court order to swear in the new legislature and state officers immediately after the vote is certified to replace these incompetent fools before they can cause any more harm to this state.