They probably should but they drive up costs in the healthcare system immensely.
OT- Philadelphia passes soda tax the bastards
- Thread starter Extra Point
- Start date
The Democrats in the State Senate and Legislature could have blocked any tax hike they wanted to over the past 15-20 years. That fact seems to have escaped you. And speaking about nothing to show for it, remember the School Construction Fund? We're still paying those bonds off.
My point was, in response to the board's least favorite partisan, is that plenty of Rs have raised taxes. We can split hairs all day, but the last surplus was under Clinton and California among other blue states has a surplus.
That isn't to say Ds are perfect especially in NJ, but Christie has not done even ONE thing to address actual fiscal problems here, he squandered the Sandy money, used the PA as a bank and depisitory for crooked allies, and billed us for everything from a bogus campaign to phony investigation to needless election.
The fact is, Christie is not a fiscal conservative at all, and very few Rs these days are in NJ, and the few that have enacted these policies have ended up like Kansas, Louisiana, and others on the brink of fiscal ruin.
Personally, I would rather the California way than the Kansas way. The Christie way is just the Soprano way, so I struggle to see how anyone could support it without being blindly partisan- and the 26% approval he has tell me many Republican citizens in NJ agree with me.
That isn't to say Ds are perfect especially in NJ, but Christie has not done even ONE thing to address actual fiscal problems here, he squandered the Sandy money, used the PA as a bank and depisitory for crooked allies, and billed us for everything from a bogus campaign to phony investigation to needless election.
The fact is, Christie is not a fiscal conservative at all, and very few Rs these days are in NJ, and the few that have enacted these policies have ended up like Kansas, Louisiana, and others on the brink of fiscal ruin.
Personally, I would rather the California way than the Kansas way. The Christie way is just the Soprano way, so I struggle to see how anyone could support it without being blindly partisan- and the 26% approval he has tell me many Republican citizens in NJ agree with me.
Diet sodas are to be taxed as well and so this is not just about sugar consumption. Basically almost all drinks (other than alcoholic beverages which have their own taxation) in bottles, cans or from a fountain are being taxed. They just chose a previously untaxed or undertaxed category of product and made it a money maker. It's not about anyone's health. They could have just as easily decided to tax cleaning supplies to get their money.
And to the PhD, it's pretty clear that you are looking for someone to argue with and I have no intention of joining your pissing match but I think you are wrong in calling this a "textbook libertarian" move. Libertarians want government out of their lives. They would not want to tax people because they have supposed unhealthy habits. Again, this tax has nothing to do with health.
Stop the nonsense. Clinton never had a surplus budget. He stole money from social security and elsewhere to produce the illusion of a surplus. Any surplus would have gone to driving down the National Debt and it never went down. That should be proof enough.
Besides, it was the ending of a natural down-cycle along with a conservative congress that put hurdles up to Clinton's wanting spending, coupled with the internet dotcom bubble that produced the results that Clinton claims as his. In Clinton's last year he ran a $100 Billion deficit.
I think Andrew Jackson was the last one to actually pay off the National Debt. Every other claim to do something like balance the budget was accounting tricks. I think Nixon did it by taking us off the gold standard.
I think maybe the proper way to evaluate Presidents in terms of the budget as a while is to see which ones created new entitlements. While Bush43 created the prescription entitlement and spent lavishly on schools, he also waged some very expensive wars that could have been done more cheaply in blood and treasure if needed at all. But Gore and Kerry both looked at the "surplus" as something they could spend as they saw fit. And Kerry talked about ending the war and using the money being spent on the war to spend on what he thought best. NONE of them cared a lick about balancing the budget and actually reducing national debt.
You would be hard pressed to find one politician to entertain the idea of actually reducing the debt... at least not without talking about massive tax increases so they can continue to spend spend spend.
