We haven't had much opportunity to discuss the Montana Realtors' effort to foreclose real estate transfer taxes through a Constitutional Amendment this November, but this should be taken for what it is -- an invitation to more speculation that leads to housing bubbles and a "Please Change the Fabric of Our State" invitation for fancy pants characters from California.
More interestingly, the campaign is apparently hiring out-of-state signature gatherers, which makes sense since Montana's unemployment rate is currently so low.
From an email I just got from Terry Minow of MEA-MFT:
They're back!!! Paid, out of state signature gatherers were working this weekend in Helena. Melissa Case saw signature gatherers in front of VANNs IGA here in Helena. She visited with them and found out they were not from Montana, a violation of Montana state law. She also heard them mischaracterizing the ballot initiative they were asking people to sign.
How can you help?
Please let me know if you see signature gatherers in your town.
Talk to them, ask where they are from, and listen to their pitch. Don't challenge them-act like you are interested in signing-play along!
If they are not from Montana, or are not explaining the initiative truthfully, take notes-date, place, time, location, and what they said, and let me know.
Ask if they are getting some kind of bonus per signature.
If you can take a photo, that would be good too.
As you know, we got three initiatives thrown off the ballot in 2006 due to signature gathering fraud. Thankfully we were able to work with the 2007 legislature to pass initiative reform that requires signature gatherers be Montana residents and banned paying on a per-signature basis.
The summary of the initiative is below. While there is no realty transfer tax now, it is dangerous to set tax policy through initiatives and constitutional amendments-take a look at California!
I should note that I ran into some signature gatherers this morning on this very initiative. The team looked like they might be local, but I'd wager against it. There's something hilarious and deeply ironic about hiring a bunch of folks from out of state to pass tax policies helpful to people from out of state while spending lots of money talking about protecting Montanans. Maybe this whole thing is a front for that same outfit running the ads attacking Jon Tester on the imaginary bank bailout.
Either way, looks like we should all be ready for some big money to look to keep Montana as their personal playground.
Oregon just raised it taxes on businesses. And Senator Jeff and 44 others say we need to advertise in Eugene and Ontario and Hines and elsewhere and entice businesses there to come to Montana because of our business-friendly tax climate.
To his and the R's credit, the rhetoric is, well, rhetorical:
Essmann said Oregon had taken a "higher tax path" to the detriment of good business. And while Montana's own tax system isn't perfect, he added, it does offer a favorable tax policy when compared to Oregon.
Among the advantages, Essmann named Montana's top marginal income tax. He said it helps small businesses retain capital and reinvest it, making it possible to expand and hire new employees.
"We need to leverage every competitive advantage we can," Essmann said. "We think now is the time, when we have a need for more jobs - and with small business in Oregon feeling under duress - to advertise the availability and the quality of our work force, and have Oregon businesses take a look."
So, what's going on? Jeff and his fellow travellers might need to review how the higher tax path was accomplished. By a vote of more than half of the state's registered voters.
Actually, there were two initiatives that passed. The Montana R's conveniently ignore the fact that the Legislature approved the tax increases last spring. Irate Oregonians took matters into their own hands and gathered enough signatures and place the tax increases on the ballot. By gum, we'll show 'em. Measure 66, which raises taxes on households earning $250,000 or more, passed by 54 percent. Measure 67, which increases corporate levies, passed with 53 percent.
Oregon voters bucked decades of anti-tax and anti-Salem sentiment Tuesday, raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy to prevent further erosion of public schools and other state services.
The tax measures passed easily, with late returns showing a 54 percent to 46 percent ratio. Measure 66 raises taxes on households with taxable income above $250,000, and Measure 67 sets higher minimum taxes on corporations and increases the tax rate on upper-level profits.
Turnout was over 60% and voters in initiative-heavy Oregon hadn't passed a tax hike in close to 80 years...so this vote is huge.
The message out of Oregon, like the message out of Massachusetts, is resonating: Voters are in a populist mood right now -- not an anti-government one, necessarily, but a populist one nevertheless. The progressive brand of populism that resonated with Oregonians this month is slightly different than the one that rang true in Massachusetts. Yet the message is just as clear.
The real question now is whether DC will listen, or if instead it will continue to cling to its common wisdom.
Additionally, let me vouch for the Oregonians behind this campaign. Kevin Looper is hella smart and one of the best field minds in the country. From what I can tell, their campaign pulled out the stops. They registered and re-registered voters, knocked hundreds of thousands of doors, and made something like a million phone calls.
You want to win? Hone your messaging, mobilize your base, and even in a recession, we can hike taxes on the rich to pay for necessary services.
I've written previously here that I'm not really upset that people are expected to pay property taxes on their property values. Assets appreciate. That's one of the reasons people buy property. Taxes on property help ensure that properties get transferred to higher value uses, etc. There's some mediation that can (and probably should) be done through mechanisms like circuit breakers, but fundamentally, taxes are OK and are part of the price of civilization.
That being said, two legislators I have tremendous respect for -- Rep. Mike Jopek and Sen. Carol Williams -- have been written interesting pieces of late on the Republicans' attempts to distance themselves from a bill that they fundamentally wrote. Rep. Jopek was the main author of the House property tax bill, but ended up voting against the version that emerged from the Senate.
I still don't know all the ins-and-outs of the process in Helena, but I do know that if Jopek, Williams, and Sen. Brueggeman all opposed this legislation, it is likely pretty crappy legislation.
Update -- Rep. Jopek's op-ed is now available as well. Jopek's take is particularly interesting as he was the primary sponsor of this legislation until Essman and most Senate Republicans reworked it to the point that he voted against his own bill.
There's an interesting conversation in comments over the fact that the Governor let this bill become law without his signature. Why not veto it, some folks are asking. jhwygirl points out that the Constitution mandates reappraisals and that failure to pass any legislation would have led to far larger tax hikes (if I'm understanding this correctly). In other words, the politics of a veto are not cut and dried.
Why not haul the legislature back for a special session? Well, without having the votes lined up in advance for a solution (Jopek's original bill? Brueggeman's alternative? Frankly, I don't know the policy here well enough to judge), special sessions can become insanely costly endeavors. If the goal here is to stop waste, that's the wrong way to go about it.
In other words, if we're going to fix this problem, we have to figure out the solution aspect first, make sure it has the votes and push the legislature to reconvene or for the Governor to call them back. I don't think there's yet enough clarity on what is happening here for that to occur.
As National Journal noted, the House measure "would be much more expensive than extending the 2009 rate." For the record, under current law, 99.7 percent of households will be completely exempt from the tax. So by Brady's own calculation, $250 billion will buy an exemption for .1 percent of households.
And as for looking to "preserve small businesses and family farms," current law would only affect about 100 of them, and "all but a handful would have sufficient liquid assets on hand (such as bank accounts, stocks, and bonds) to pay the tax without having to touch the farm or business."
I think a $250 billion budgetary hole in the name of preserving fewer than 100 family farms is just insane.
I got referred to this story (h/t Bunk in the West) and it really is a pretty incredible example of just no understanding of how taxes work. In Montana, we have repeatedly made clear our preference for income and property taxes over sales taxes. Just as income taxes tax income and sales taxes tax sales, property taxes tax property. There's an admirable truth in advertising at work here.
That means that when property values rise, as they have up in the Flathead, where the setting is gorgeous and lots of people want to move, the taxes rise along with them. This is actually part of the argument for a property tax: the property being taxed costs the owners more as others would be willing to pay more for it, which means that owners have an incentive to sell. That generates economic activity and ensures that property is going to a more productive use (as determined by the market).
The flip side of this, of course, is that some people's property taxes are declining massively -- for folks in places like Hysham, I would guess. Places where property values have stagnated or declined, taxes will actually fall for homeowners. You really can't have one without the other.
That's not to say that there isn't a human interest story here. It also isn't to say that there aren't some policy responses -- we could decide that we think that some lands deserve to be inherited for the rest of time (and perhaps give the Flathead Lake coast to American Indians) and cease property taxation. We could also instill some circuit breakers such that property taxes can't overwhelm a family's income on properties up to certain values.
But there are good reasons why it shouldn't be free to hold on to a property worth $2 million. And, as Bunk in the West notes, if you've got a piece of property worth $2 million and paying property taxes is an issue, now is a pretty good time to take out a mortgage on the place and take out some diversified investments. You can probably pay the property taxes on the income from the investments and pay down the mortgage over time. Maybe it won't work out. Maybe it will. Maybe the land will stay in your family. Maybe it won't.
But economic stagnation for generations isn't going to be good for the state...and it is a policy that we abandoned centuries ago.
Update -- Just remembered that Chuck Johnson actually wrote a pretty helpful guide to the reassessment, including for people who are seeing giant hikes in valuation.
Montana Sen. Max Baucus has started talking of new legislation to prevent America's wealthiest citizens from illegally hiding money in off-shore accounts, and so away from the prying eyes of the Internal Revenue Service.
You'd think such measures would be no-brainers. After all, stashing money like that is criminal. These tax dodges are like the worst leeches. They use our country, our infrastructure, our laws and resources to make their millions, but, unlike the rest of us, they refuse to pitch in their fair share. We're living in a country where every door has been left open for the wealthiest. And those gold-plated thieves ha've made off with piles of our money. Estimates have these off-shore accounts costing our nation more than $100 billion in lost tax revenues. Click here to see a New York Times column on the subject.
America needs that stolen money to help us restart our economy, rebuild our infrastructure and pay for health care for all.
And Americans need to realize that it's this same class of modern robber barons who are bankrolling the campaign against the Employee Free Choice Act.
Email Rep. Denny Rehberg and tell him to stop tax cheats and help rebuild Montana's working families. Email Sen. Jon Tester to keep up the good work by voicing his support of the Employee Free Choice Act. Tell Sen. Max Baucus to close the door on those tax cheats and stand up for Montana.
I've been writing a lot about how Max's proposal to tax benefits would work for a reason: misinformation and confusion ran rampant in the 1993 health care debate. That ended up doing a lot of harm -- not just to progressives, but to the American people who remain stuck in the most broken health care system of any in the industrialized world.
That said, even though Max Baucus's proposal isn't akin to John McCain's, there are good reasons it has a lot of people upset (I should note here that tax deductibility is not one of the areas I've given a ton of thought to in this realm). This letter from the NEA to Rep. Rob Andrews, who chairs the same subcommittee that Pat Williams did when Pat passed out both Clintoncare and a single-payer bill back in the '93/'94 effort, explains those concerns quickly:
Guarantee that the employee tax exclusion for health benefits is not limited or capped in any way. Over the course of their careers, many public education employees have traded salary increases for the long term security of a comprehensive health plan. Telling hard-working employees that benefits will be cut or that they will pay more taxes would unfairly penalize them. A tax on salaries above a certain amount would also be unfair to experienced educators who, after decades of dedicated service, have climbed to the top of their salary schedules. Limiting or capping the tax exclusion for health benefits could have a disastrous effect on public education by discouraging highly qualified workers from entering or staying in the profession.
Health care is a huge, difficult subject. And most of this stuff is more complicated than it looks on first blush. We'll keep trying to help navigate the weeds of it here on Left in the West.
So I dug up the relevant portions from Baucus's white paper on health care. I'm glad it is in there, both because that means that it wasn't an off-the-cuff remark...and because I remember it being in there the first time I read the paper and thinking to myself, "Hmmmm... this is bold. He'll probably catch hell for this."
So here, in full after the jump, is the section on "Tax Incentives for Health Coverage" in all of its glory, released last November:
Just to clarify, Max Baucus's proposal to tax health benefits probably doesn't apply to all benefits. From the Missoulian article on the subject (keep in mind that "Finance Committee staffers" means "Baucus staffers"):
When asked why Baucus favors taxing health benefits instead of increasing taxes for the wealthiest of Americans, Matsdorf said Baucus would prefer "to try and first pay for health care reform with health care dollars."
As explained by Finance Committee staffers working on health care reform, narrowing the tax exemption for health benefits may take two forms: Eliminating the benefit for people earning above a certain amount, such as $250,000 a year, or capping the amount of health benefit that is tax-free.
So, those who end up paying taxes on health benefits could be very wealthy people, those with a very "rich" or valuable health policy, or both.
People with average incomes or average health benefits probably wouldn't be affected.
Exempting employer-provided health benefits from taxation also is "regressive," committee staffers say, because it's usually more valuable to wealthier taxpayers.
I understand people's concerns with this proposal, but I want to set the record straight. This is not an across-the-board proposal.
Just two mildly random and divergent thoughts this morning:
When Matthew Yglesias talks about broken local policy and the need for more local libertarianism, I think he is talking about stuff like Missoula's local zoning ordinance. The current version is a mess that makes it hard to do just about anything, as a friend of mine put it. It started with good intentions and was slowly filled up with regulations that have made the city undevelopable. Some people seem to like that. Ironically, this is an area where conservatives seem to love heavy government regulation and liberals like Yglesias, myself, and the county Dems (Pete Talbot mentions the issue in this post) come down on the side of deregulation. The reworked zoning ordinance should be better for just about anyone whose idea of reasonable government isn't either flat-out prohibitions on building or requirements that we have quarter acre lots in town. That's an exaggeration, clearly, but it doesn't feel like a huge one.
Most tax structures in this country are set up not to capture benefits of inflation and some, like the property tax, grow far slower than inflation. Meanwhile, we regularly cut taxes year after year after year. Then we wonder why our school districts are hurting, our health care system is broken, and we've got a giant deficit. This is one of those areas where, at least in theory, I favor broad tax simplification -- but not a flattening of marginal rates. Doing taxes, in practice, is a giant pain in the ass. I say that as someone who has 4 sources of income -- three small businesses (very small, I should add) and some W-2s. I'd add in taxing capital gains like wage income (frankly, I'm an advocate of taxing capital gains at a higher rate, but for the sake of simplicity, I'll mix it all together) and we could have a one-sheet tax return -- or very close to it.
Advocates of flat taxes have some points, except that they haven't really thought through the tiny marginal benefits of simplifying the tax code to the point where you actually get the gains from having a single tax bracket or the relatively difficult aspects of altering payroll taxes to income taxes and eliminating the personal exemption, which is effectively a 0% bracket.
But our country needs to pay for stuff and, frankly, we'd be better off individually if we did. I've got a $11,000 car loan. I'd much rather have a viable southern train route and a car share in Missoula. We can't do that kind of stuff without taxes.
GOP proposes capital gains tax cut to attract new businesses to Montana
Yargh! Capital gains taxes don't depend on where the investment is made, but where the investor lives.
In other words, you cut capital gains taxes in Montana and Montanans invest...wherever the hell they want.
Second problem -- and I'm not entirely clear how this plays in Montana -- but federal income taxes generally make state taxes deductible, partially or wholly. So we cut capital gains taxes in Montana, Dennis Washington invests in New York, pays lower state taxes but higher federal taxes.
Third problem -- most investment is not driven by tax rates but by perceived success or failure of a business. The idea that huge numbers of people are scared out of investing because they'll pay a tax if the venture is successful is ludicrous.
Don't just take it from me, take it from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy's Issue Brief on the subject:
Advocates of capital gains tax cuts make no bones about the fact that working taxpayers receive very little benefit from such cuts. They argue that capital gains breaks are designed to encourage economic development by rewarding investment. But there are reasons to believe that capital gains tax breaks are an ineffective strategy for achieving state economic development.
First, capital gains tax breaks have not been shown to encourage additional investment on the federal level-and this linkage is even more tenuous at the state level. A general state capital gains tax break is highly unlikely to benefit that state's economy, since any new investment encouraged by the capital gains break could take place anywhere in the United States or the world.
Second, a substantial part of any state capital gains tax break will never find its way to the pockets of state residents. Because state income taxes can be written off on federal tax forms by those taxpayers who itemize their federal income taxes, and because the ability to write off state income taxes is most valuable for the wealthy Americans who realize most capital gains income, any reduction in state capital gains taxes will be partially offset by an increase in federal income tax liability. For example, ITEP has estimated that 25 percent of the state revenue losses from the Arkansas capital gains tax deduction are directly offset by federal tax increases, and that this "federal offset" increases to 34 percent for the wealthiest taxpayers.
Few policy makers would seriously propose an economic development program that simply threw away 25 percent of its allocated budget-yet that is essentially what lawmakers are doing when they propose a capital gains tax break.
Update -- Wow. Must have been in a hurry yesterday, I called Mr. Dennison, "Mike Dennis." My bad.
Charles Johnson has a story this morning fleshing out more of the details. The tax break is apparently aimed at capital gains tax cuts for new businesses starting or moving to Montana in the next three years. I'm not sure exactly how you do that on the personal income tax side of things instead of the corporate income tax side of things, but apparently this works.
This takes care of one in three of my concerns, but doesn't do anything to address the federal deductibility issue or the fact that capital gains tax cuts just haven't ever been shown to have a stimulative impact.
I haven't followed this issue in any depth, but The New York Times provides an interesting letter from Rep. Charles Rangel (and the NYT's response to the letter) regarding a fight that Rangel apparently had with, among others, our senior Senator over closing loopholes for businesses trying to escape taxes.
From my inbox -- and I assure you, not from anyone with a connection to our Senator, whose role in the recounting (from the NYT's end) is peripheral to the meat.
I highlight this because it appears to be another case of Max Baucus taking a genuinely progressive stand in a little noticed arena.
My applauding of Max Baucus's health care framework has drawn raised eyebrows from some quarters, but I think it is deserved on the merits, which I'm happy to discuss.
If you notice, down on the left-hand column of this site, there is a report card for Montana's Congressional delegation courtesy of the Drum Major Institute, a great progressive think tank out of New York.
It shouldn't be a huge surprise that Jon Tester scores higher than Max Baucus, but what is notable is that both score pretty high and that Max Baucus has voted the "progressive" approach on economic issues 21 out of 24 times (DMI says the exception are an estate tax vote, the bailout, and a mortgage amendment I don't fully understand; Tester voted with Baucus on the estate tax and the mortgage amendment).
For both Tester and Baucus, these records appear to be improvements over past years (note -- Rehberg, although still scoring way lower also improved his score this year so far).
The Drum Major crowd is no set of pushovers when it comes to economic policy. Voting with them 88-92% of the time is impressive. For comparison, Kent Conrad sided with them 78% of the time, Dianne Feinstein 83%, Blanche Lincoln 74%, Barbara Mikulski 83%, and Jim Webb 83%. Only Bernie Sanders and Ted Kennedy scored 100%.
There's a nice article in today's Flathead Beacon about the HD8 race that involves Cheryl Steenson, recently interviewed on LiTW.
One of the things Steenson said about her district in the Flathead Valley, was that it doesn't like candidates who vote straight party line:
my campaign certainly has focused on the issue of bipartisanship. This district is one that has gone back and forth between Democratic and Republican for the last...about twelve cycles. And incumbents have held this district twice. And part of that is, folks talk running a moderate campaign, and when they get to Helena and vote straight party ticket. And realistically that doesn't represent this district best.
And, from Dan Testa's report:
But for Craig Witte, the Republican representing Kalispell's House District 8, the bitter tone was set before the 2007 session, when Glasgow Sen. Sam Kitzenberg switched from the Republican Party to Democrat, after being offered a state job by Gov. Brian Schweitzer, and handed a 26-24 senate majority to Democrats.
"The Legislature was purchased by the executive branch with our tax dollars," Witte, now running for his second term, said. "That wasn't honorable; that started it straight up."
In the legislature, Witte did vote straight party line, even supporting sending the legislature into special session at taxpayer expense. As Testa's article also makes clear, Witte supports the state party's tax-cut scheme straight down the line, so much so, he was appointed to Sinrud's House Appropriation committee. In fact, he advocated for slashing the state income tax, which would cost the state budget more than $300 million, most of which savings would go to big corporations and the wealthy, leaving us with a few extra bucks and a woefully underfunded school system.
Steenson, as mentioned in her interview, favors a progressive tax policy, that gives the bulk of the cuts to the people who need it: small businesses and everyday Montanans.
This is probably a good time to mention that Steenson, like so many other candidates, desperately needs a last-minute infusion of cash to make one final push towards Election Day. You know what to do.
At risk of stealing cleveland's thunder, did you see Roy Brown's proposed property tax relief plan? Basically he's proposing what Republicans in the state legislature proposed: permanent property tax relief. And Brown is promising $300 million reduction in the state budget.
Oh, boy! So...give us the numbers, Roy?
Brown said such a reduction in the statewide property tax may help an average homeowner by about $50 a year, although he is not yet sure of the exact amount. He said the biggest benefit of such a decrease is that it reduces tax bills year after year.
"Maybe it's not a huge deal to get a $100 reduction on your property taxes but it helps offset the (local tax) increases," Brown said.
Fifty bucks? And the state offers fewer services?
Given that, under an apparently spendthrift Schweitzer administration, Montana enjoyed a $400 million surplus and managed to give each Montana homeowner a $400 rebate...where's all that extra money in Brown's proposal going to?
You got it: to the big property owner. The seasonal McMansion and big out-of-state corporations.
I can't imagine what Roy Brown is thinking here. By releasing the details of his plan, he's illustrated exactly why the Republican permanent tax relief plan is regressive, benefitting the wealthiest among us at a time of financial uncertainty for the average joe and jane.
And, thanks to Brown, all that debate about how the surplus should have gone to the state's schools gets lost; because under a Brown governor ship, not only would he spend less on our state's infrastructure, he'll give us back less, too.
At risk of sounding too optimistic -- after all, there still are Republicans in the Senate -- it looks like we've got a tax deal that'll restore tax credits to alternative energy providers and fix the AMT mess. Both Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell have signed on, and as the leaders of their respective parties in the Senate, that bodes well.
The catch with a tax bill in the past was that cuts and credits were to have been paid for by raising rates on energy corporations and hedge fund managers. Republicans balked. As is their wont, they refused to consider anything less than cuts with no offsets. So...what's the deal with this bill?
Baucus and Grassley said the clean energy tax incentives would be paid for with such measures as freezing the tax deduction for the domestic manufacturing activities of American oil and gas companies and tightening the rules by which oil and gas companies pay taxes on income earned overseas.
The said the extension of expiring family and business tax cuts, which include expansion of the child tax credit and legislation providing parity for mental health treatment, would be partially offset by closing loopholes by which hedge fund managers use offshore corporations to defer taxes on compensation received for investment services.
The AMT fix would not be paid for.
Hm. What in tarnation is going on here? Election pressures on the GOP? Is an economic collapse weighing heavily on our Republican friends? Perhaps the campaign donations from the investment sector are drying up.
Everybody seems to be playing nicely with one another, so maybe we are going to see a bill. I'm sure there are a dozen things wrong with it -- and it's certainly not completely offset, which might cause it to stall in the House, but I'm with Rep. Steny Hoyer, who said of the bill, it was "better to do something half right than not do it at all."
What is wrong with the Senate Republicans? Do they want to become a cliche of themselves?
Today, Republicans blocked a bill that would have given ordinary Americans -- teachers, small businesses, and parents -- tax cuts, patched the AMT, and given tax credits to renewable energy projects...because these cuts and credits would be paid for by closing a tax loophole on hedge-fund managers and raising taxes on big corporations.
And Baucus was in the thick of things, trying to make the bill palatable to Republicans by adding some compromises to the bill, but Republicans stubbornly refused to support the bill, screwing the fledgling alternative energy industry, teachers, parents, and middle-class taxpayers, while piling on to our deficit.
I mean, are big corporations and hedge fund managers really supporting Republicans that much?
And, yes, consider this praise for our Senior Senator, for you well-"embrowed" supporters out there. This is good, progressive legislation that needs to be done, and Max was there trying to make it happen.
News came recently that Montana again would have a state budget surplus - bigger, even, than projected. The state has a $400-million surplus, and projections put a similar happy face on 2009's budget.
Not surprisingly, Sen. Roy Brown had one of the most trenchant comments about the "underspending" by state government -- spun by the governor as intentional "belt-tightening." Yeah. Right.
Brown: "The fact that state agencies were unable to spend at least $14 million should tell Montanans just how bloated the last budget was. The budget is growing so fast that state agencies couldn't keep up and spend it all, and that's not something to be proud of."
The GOP answer to budget surpluses is permanent property-tax relief. But does that make sense?
Given that the GOP plan to reduce property taxes would give individual homeowners pennies, and big out-of-state corporations and seasonal McMansion owners dollars -- thousands of them -- while simultaneously weakening an already underfunded public school system....I say, no.
In short, following the Republican plan would be disastrous for most Montanans.
Or, as the Good Guv said, "For all the rhetoric of Republicans, it turns out they're not very good with money....They gave tax breaks to out-of-state corporations and made homeowners pay more and more."
But you won't see that in this election, because apparently state Republicans don't give a rat's *ss about the environment, or regulation, or your health or property.
Here are some Congressional doin's that involve our state's delegation...
* * *
I just saw this bit of news, that Sens. Baucus and Tester helped appropriate more than $1 million for the Montana Comprehensive Health Association "to operate its high-risk pool." What's the high-risk pool? I'm glad you asked:
The high-risk pool helps sick or recovering Montanans pay for health insurance they couldn't otherwise afford because they have pre-existing diseases or conditions. Patients with cancer, diabetes or other debilitating diseases can be excluded from health insurance plans or charged exorbitant fees because they are expensive to insure.
More than 3,000 Montanans are enrolled in the high-risk pool. Within the pool, members living near the poverty level also qualify for additional insurance premium assistance.
Okay, great appropriation that actually helps people get medical care without getting bankrupt. Thanks to the Senators, etc & co.
But this is just a band-aid for a serious and broken system. Everybody should have the right to receive quality medical care without fear of bankruptcy.
Q: You favor an increase in the capital gains tax, saying, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton, which was 28%." It's now 15%. That's almost a doubling if you went to 28%. Bill Clinton dropped the capital gains tax to 20%, then George Bush has taken it down to 15%. And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28%, the revenues went down.
A: What I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness. The top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year--$29 billion for 50 individuals. Those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That's not fair.
Q: But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up.
A: Well, that might happen or it might not. It depends on what's happening on Wall Street and how business is going.
For the purposes of fairness? Doesn't everyone in America, or the world for that matter, have the opportunity to invest in the stock market and gain the opportunity to share in the profits of the evil corporations through dividends? When George Bush lowered the capital gains tax in 2003, income at the IRS from capital gains QUADRUPLED...and that is only since 2003.
What is happening here is Barry is maintaining the image that has been created of the evil corporation and the view that he, the Hil-dog, and the Silky Pony have created of economics and business in America being a zero-sum game. When someone (i.e. a corporation) in America makes a dollar, it does not mean that someone in the other of the Two Americas loses a dollar. This also serves to tax the money made by corporations not once, not twice, BUT THREE TIMES!!! Why are punishing people, especially the common investor, such as myself, for taking advantage of this system. That is not fair to me as an investor...its fair to those who don't.
