Editor, The Transcript:
One can wish that every Oklahoman has read and absorbed the content of the article appearing in The Norman Transcript on Monday which covered the various tax breaks that the state lawmakers enacted over the years. In the article, the sum of more than $3.1 billion is reported in 15 different major exemptions, deductions, credits, etc. The State Tax Commission, however, lists more than 300 such enactments. There are many more deductions to take effect in the near future which will add hundreds of millions more to the budget shortfalls.
With the Republicans in control of both houses of the legislature, we can assume that they will pass more tax cuts to energize the depressed economy of the State, because that is their answer (along with too much Democratic support, to be sure), to nearly every problem the state confronts. A recent exception is the "right-to-work" law which they promised would bring in a flood of industries. We are still waiting for that promise to be realized.
The overwhelming effect of the many tax cuts in good times has a way of coming home to roost when times are bad, as will always happen. If their goal is to handicap government so that our State will remain among those at the bottom of the 50 states in social service programs, prisons, education and a host of other programs that the people through our legislature enacted over the decades, it appears that they will succeed.
In the end, we can expect that the Federal Government will be blamed for our lack of state revenues even as it pours millions of dollars annually (along with $4.5 billion of stimulus money now allocated for Oklahoma) into the state at the cost of ever greater national indebtedness. When will we, the voters, demand that tax policy be based on the needs of our State rather than the politics of our legislators?
WALTER SCHEFFER
Norman
