According to a report in The Citizen newspaper, Georgia state Representative Virgil Fludd (D-Tyrone) “wants to add a ‘temporary’ 1 percent income tax surcharge on Georgia’s highest earners as a way to raise more than $200 million for the state’s beleaguered budget. Fludd last week filed House Bill 1066 which would apply the temporary 1 percent surcharge for married couples who have a total income of more than $400,000 and single individuals with an income of $200,000. The additional income tax surcharge affects less than 1 percent of Georgia taxpayers, according to a news release issued by Fludd.”
What does the representative, and those who will stand with him on this proposal, not get? Has he missed all the upheaval and furor that the Tea Party folks and the Town Hall meetings have generated over the past year? Does he not think that the voters around the country haven’t been sending a clear message that enough is enough?
The representative apparently believes that the common people will not mind a tax increase on the wealthy as long as they are not affected.
For the record, I am a long, long way from the targeted incomes to be hit by Mr. Fludd’s tax. It won’t affect me personally. That’s not the point.
The point, Mr. Fludd, is that the cities, the counties, the states, and the federal government need to quit gorging on tax dollars and learn to live within their means — like the rest of us have to do. There has been an gluttonous orgy of spending and pork over the last several years and the public is ready to regurgitate (I was going to use the word “vomit” but my secretary thought it was too offensive).
Does anyone really believe that a tax increase will be “temporary?” It was only in 2006 that a tax levied to finance the Spanish-American War was repealed. That tax was imposed in 1898 and it took 106 years to be finally repealed, according to USA Today.
It too was a “tax on the wealthy” because it levied a 3 percent tax on long distance phone calls. Apparently Congress never imagined that the masses would ever have a telephone. The “tax on the wealthy” eventually became a tax on nearly everyone.
What needs to be “temporary” is the tenure of lawmakers at every level that continue to loot and pillage the citizens at every turn.
If the President of the United States is subject to term limits, why not every elected official? And if elected representatives continue to assault the taxpayers, how about if they receive a sound drubbing at the polls next time around? Whatever their political party.
It was the tax issue that cost George H. W. Bush his job. It was, in part, the spending frenzy that routed the Republicans last year.
Hey, you elected people, in Atlanta and Washington — how about some restraint for a change? How about tightening your own darn belts instead of forcing the citizens to tighten theirs all the time? How about laying off your own staff instead of forcing businesses to lay off theirs?
Already, some 50 percent of the American public pays no federal taxes at all. There are a good number of people who pay no state taxes either. The burden is already being borne by the innovators, job-producers, and some of the hardest working among us.
Now Mr. Fludd proposes that these same people be hit even harder. When does it stop? Since Rep. Fludd’s bill it only affects 1 percent of Georgia’s taxpayers, why not have a “temporary” 10 percent tax? Or 25 percent? Maybe 50 percent? Heck, why not just take it all? Sheesh.
I may be wrong but I think I hear the train a-coming. It should arrive just about the second Tuesday of November. Unless the politicians get a clue, I suspect that more than a few of them will get run over.
[David Epps is the pastor of the Cathedral of Christ the King (www.ctkcec.org.), 4881 Hwy. 34 E., Sharpsburg, GA 30277, between Peachtree City and Newnan. Services are held Sundays at 8:30 and 10 a.m. He is also the bishop of the Mid-South Diocese (www.midsouthdiocese.org). He may be contacted at frepps@ctkcec.org.]
