Hopefully people read beyond the headline and first few paragraphs of a newspaper story. If not, this is what you would have seen in Wednesday’s Press & Sun-Bulletin:

Republicans in the state Senate on Wednesday countered Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s $1 billion plan to revitalize the upstate economy by passing its own “Upstate Now” proposal, which calls for a $3.7 billion upstate investment.

“Investment.” Makes it sound like the Repubs want to out-spend Spitzer and really turn up the spigot, right? You would be wrong. A few more paragraphs into the story we find this:

Senate Republicans are calling for $2.7 billion in tax relief to upstate businesses phased in over three years, ranging from eliminating business taxes on manufacturers to providing tax credits for health insurance for small businesses.

The Repubs actually want to let businesses keep more of what they earn. Which leads to reinvestment. Which leads to expansion. Which leads to more jobs. Which leads to more people earning money (i.e. more people on the tax rolls). Which ultimately leads to more tax revenue for the state. The issue of how taxes work–that you can actually CUT them and it leads to more revenue–has been misunderstood (and misconstrued by Dems) for years. The Senate Repubs have got the right idea.

It is kindergartenish to say “you must pay for that tax cut!” It implies that the money in question, which is YOUR money, somehow automatically belongs to the politicians in Albany instead of where it really belongs, in your pocket. Albany is spending way too much of our money. Instead of asking how to pay for a tax cut, we should be asking Gov. Spitzer and our legislators, “How will you pay for your pork barrel spending? Please justify forcibly taking my money and giving it to someone else.”

Let me answer the question: How do you pay for a tax cut? Quite simple–you spend less. You won’t even need to spend the same amount less (in this case $2.7 billion, the amount of the proposed cut) because as I’ve pointed out, the tax cut will lead to a tax revenue increase.

Unfortunately, the Repubs have also succumbed to the siren song of pork barrel spending. The article goes on:

They [the Republicans] also want another $1 billion in taxpayer funds to spend on projects.

So Repubs want to keep Spitzer’s idea of redistributing your hard earned money to all sorts of pork projects in Upstate. That’s the disheartening part. Repubs have the tax cut part correct…but they still don’t get it when it comes to overspending.

State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno was correct when referring to Spitzer’s plan to “close loopholes” and “raise fees” (which translates into raising taxes on business). He said:

“People here in business have to compete and you can’t suffocate them by increasing fees. Because what do people do? They move.”

Ever higher taxes…Albany spending out-of-control…high cost of doing business. It’s no secret why Upstate is bleeding jobs and population. Keep the $2.7B tax cut, dump the $1B pork spending.

Technorati Tags: New York State budget, New York State spending, pork barrel spending, tax cuts, economics 101, Eliot Spitzer, Joe Bruno