Tonight, Gov. Jim Gibbons is set to deliver his State of the State speech, describing how he thinks Nevada ought to trim $900 million from the budget. Despite the fondest hopes of some, he will continue to stand against new taxes.
He will be pilloried for this, as he should be. Nevada needed to broaden its tax base in good times, and failed to do so, which makes bad times all the worse. While most conservatives will say a recession is a terrible time to raise taxes, they will repeat that mantra in good times, too. For them, there’s never a good time to raise taxes. And for Gibbons, out of money and without political friends, this is the last opportunity he’ll have to command statewide attention, assuming he stays out of the parking garage near McCormick & Schmick’s.
But before we start lobbing all our slings and arrows towards Gibbons, consider this: Almost every member of the Nevada Legislature is also as anti-tax as Gibbons. At least they are now. With primary election day in June, and the general in November — less than nine months away — few incumbents want to risk the wrath of the voters by advocating a tax increase, for which they can be easily attacked. Republicans don’t want Tea Party challengers to crop up in their primaries, and Democratic leaders want to maintain their hold on both houses of the Legislature, especially with redistricting coming up next year. As always, most Democrats cower from the tax-and-spend label.
Hence, everybody will go to Carson City and cut, and nobody will say the T-word, unless it’s to talk about some faraway, distant possibility 0f maybe, possibly, considering the option to discuss taxes, right about the time that leprechauns astride magical unicorns gallop through valleys made of candy underneath rainbows and starbursts, tossing their golden coins to fair maidens tending the fields of endless plenty.
Back in the real world, where Nevada is very close to becoming a failed state, budget cutting alone is the order of the day. So before you get upset exclusively at Gibbons for his parsimonious ways, consider that even if he flung wide the doors to taxation in his speech tonight, he’d probably get no takers. In the grim enterprise of balancing this budget, everybody’s on the same, sorry page.
Loading ...
