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Publisher's Note: Assault on your freedom
By Jody Reese
The New Hampshire Advantage Coalition doesn’t like good-old-fashioned American democracy. The coalition is working to impose tax caps in most large New Hampshire communities, including Concord, Manchester, Merrimack and Rochester.
What’s so un-American about tax caps?
Tax caps have been imposed in Nashua, Laconia and Dover. The tax cap limits government services. Any growth in the cost of those services beyond the rate of inflation and growth in community would require a two-thirds vote of the elected officials in charge of setting those costs.
Obviously, it’s not the spending less that’s un-American. That’s perfectly American. It’s the requirement of a two-thirds vote to spend or raise beyond the cap.
By limiting the majority’s ability to raise and spend money, the cap gives the minority the same power as the majority. In other words, people’s votes are no longer worth one vote. Some votes are worth more than others. That’s the un-American part.
A tax cap gives voters today the power to take away votes from voters in the future. It’s essentially saying that voters today don’t trust elected officials in the future to control government services; and since our elected officials are elected by us voters, it really means the tax cappers don’t trust future voters to make decisions for themselves.
More than just going against hundreds of years of New Hampshire government tradition, the tax caps are completely redundant.
We already have spending caps. They’re called elected officials.
If you don’t like the growth of government services then vote against candidates who support the growth and for candidates who want to spend less. If you can’t convince enough people to vote with you, then your taxes might go up. That’s called democracy.
Tax cappers will tell you that they are working to save the New Hampshire advantage from people who want to raise your taxes. But just who are these tax raisers?
They’re your elected officials. If we don’t want higher tax and we want less government service, then vote for a guy or gal who will vote against tax increases. It’s really a great system of democracy that has served us well for more than 200 years.
It’s true that some things in our system of government require a two-thirds vote. For example, changing our state’s constitution requires such a super-majority vote and in some towns super-majorities are needed to borrow large amounts of money. The reasoning there is that the bond obligates future voters to funding the project.
Tax rates and budgets are different. They don’t obligate future voters. The next election cycle could see a whole new group of officials and those folks could easily vote to cut services, lower taxes or do just the opposite.
And that’s why a tax cap isn’t necessary. Your vote is the tax cap.
Anything else is un-American and completely contrary to New Hampshire’s way of life.
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