Here are previews of editorials we're working on. Let us know what you think. The best comments will run alongside the editorials in the print edition.
--Looks like Marylanders threatening to leave the state over tax increases have one less place to go. Delaware, long the darling of anti-tax types in the Free State, just wrapped up work on closing an $800 million hole in its budget – no mean feat considering the whole thing is about $3.3 billion. Gov. Jack Markell pushed for steep budget cuts but also about $200 million a year in tax increases. He increased the state's value added tax to 8 percent and the income tax on top earners to 6.95 percent. (And when Delaware says "top earners," it means anybody making over $60,000 a year.) Taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and slot machine proceeds are going up, too. The state is increasing corporate franchise taxes and the public utility tax and is resurrecting the estate tax.
OK, no to Delaware, then. How about Pennsylvania? The governor and legislature are at an impasse over closing that state's budget gap, but Gov. Ed Rendell is pushing for an increase in the income and cigarette taxes, plus new taxes on smokeless tobacco and natural gas extraction.
Marylanders may still be smarting over the tax increases Gov. Martin O'Malley and the Democrat-controlled legislature approved in 2007, but they can take some comfort in the fact that as the state grapples with new fiscal problems, more tax increases are politically off the table. Maryland may have raised taxes earlier than its neighbors, but in the end, it won't be alone.
--With the economy still lagging and unemployment growing, talk in Washington has turned to the idea of a second stimulus program. This is hogwash. Most of the money from the first stimulus hasn't even gotten out the door yet, in some cases by design and in others by typical delays in implementing such a vast program. The nation needs to give the first stimulus time to work before borrowing more money to fund a second round.
