Yesterday I wrote here about Maggie Brooks inability to solve our budget deficit woes and today on Election Geek I wrote about a report showing many states are in a recession and I talked about the economic realities surrounding that fact. Now, let’s put the two together.

I personally hate Monroe County Executive Maggie Brooks F.A.I.R plan and I dislike her promise to not raise taxes. Not because I want higher taxes or am amazingly against cutting county aid to suburban school districts, but because we are all ignoring reasonable solutions to systemic problems. Namely in order to balance a budget and inspire economic growth we must face two realities, we either have to cut spending or raise revenue (taxes), two fundamental options no one wants to consider.

Let’s start with cutting spending. One of the biggest reasons we have this god awful F.A.I.R plan is because of Medicaid spending. Medicaid spending is out of control and in New York State we are estimated to lose billions a year, that isn’t millions but BILLIONS, on Medicaid fraud. We spent an estimated $2,165 per NYS resident (twice the national average) or $44,712,222,361 in 2006, $152 Million of that comes from Monroe County. Yes the county was allowed to explore new ways of cracking down on Medicaid fraud but the fundamental truth remains. Every year we spend more money on Medicaid, but every year do we equally see more people getting healthier, finding jobs, producing more or crime rates dropping to match? No, so what are we doing?

We MUST cut spending, first for useless projects like the Renaissance Square, but then on massive government programs like Medicaid. All I hear from Democrats are proposals to spend more while taxing the rich. Sure, a new source of revenue is wonderful, but it is wonderful for ending our fiscal deficits not for spending more on social welfare programs. If we spend more and tax more, we aren’t bringing in more, that should be the simplest thing a person can ever explain yet it seems to be something the Democratic party doesn’t understand.

So we get into raising revenue. A report came out the other day from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that 61% of American Corporations, 39% of large corporations did not pay taxes in 2006. What in the world is going on?

While companies are getting off easy, thanks to loopholes, ordinary wage earners are getting stuck with the tab. The tax burden on individuals is expected to climb from $1.16 trillion in 2007 to $1.21 trillion this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), while corporate tax receipts are expected to decline from $370 billion to $364 billion. By 2013, the CBO estimates, ordinary taxpayers’ bills may climb to $1.86 trillion while corporate tax bills drop to $327 billion.

So my tax dollars are going to pay for people who don’t work while corporations don’t pay taxes. Well, that is wonderful. I am personally of the mind that corporate taxes in general are a little too high, but not when they don’t pay taxes at all. How about a sensible and reasonable tax rate that everyone pays so that instead of paying nothing at all, corporations can prosper and give back a reasonable amount at the same time?

You see, taxes are an inevitability and keeping them at a fair rate is essential to providing for the general welfare, meaning defense and public works. No politician though wants to face the essential reality, especially in our area. Republicans are the first to say they will cut taxes, especially from the federal government. Wonderful, but do they realize the impact those tax cuts have on states and local governments? As long as the states feed off the federal government, tax cuts will only be paid by everyone somewhere else in the future

Now do I blame the politicians? No, honestly I blame the voters because we demand politicians tell us what we know to be untrue but we want to hear.

In essence we all know these simple truths. We cannot spend more than we have and expect not to have to eventually pay for it with interest, that is true in our own lives and it is true for the government. We become outraged when suburban school funding was cut in Monroe county but we still expected the government to provide free health care to people who don’t add to our society and keep funding all of the services we like. We become enraged when a politician tells us they won’t lower our taxes and outraged again when we have to pay more somewhere else or see our services go down to pay for a decrease.

In short, Upstate, NY like the rest of the country is headed for financial ruin, not solely because we have no leadership, though believe me we don’t, but because we have unreasonable demands. We need to cut spending, we need to potentially pay more and we need to demand our politicians be honest when they tell us they can give everything we want without a price tag. Without doing those things we will never find a solution, just more of the same.