I tried. I really tried. I tried to understand and even rationalize Gov. Jack Markell’s argument that any additional taxation of the wealthy would work against his efforts to create jobs in Delaware. He made this argument in a meeting with Delaware bloggers a couple of weeks ago. He said, and I’m paraphrasing, that ‘these kinds of things’ (a tax-friendly environment for business executives) are what those considering Delaware for business expansion look for. He also lamented that certain Delawareans, we’d know their names if he mentioned them, have officially established residence elsewhere because of an estate tax increase.
In other words, there are simply certain Delawareans or would-be Delawareans who, according to the Markell Administration, are Too Rich To Tax Equitably (Code Name: TRITE). If we tax them too heavily, so goes the Administration’s wisdom, they will move. Or at least pretend to move. Or not come here in the first place. To which Al Mascitti says, tax the property. We don’t have a statewide property tax and the Billionaires on the Hill, through their decades of basically running this state, are the reason why we don’t. They’d have to pay their fair share. Let’s stop pretending here. If this Administration had the political will to ensure that the wealthy pay their fair share, they’d find a way. And they’d likely have a receptive General Assembly to enact it.
Keep those thoughts in mind as we fast-forward to:
A Town Hall Meeting Last Night at Mount Pleasant High School Featuring the Governor and Members of His Administration.
Let’s do just a few take-outs from Chad Livengood’s story in today’s News-Journal:
At a town hall meeting at Mount Pleasant High School, Markell said he has not supported a specific plan, but he has tasked the General Assembly with reducing state employee health insurance and pension costs by $100 million over the next five years. That could mean a reduction in benefits or taking more out of employee’s checks to cover the escalating costs.
Donna O’Hanlon, who handles Medicaid claims in the Department of Health and Social Services spoke up and said the governor’s call for shared sacrifice would not be equal among all state employees.”Unfortunately, the shared sacrifice is actually felt by 35,000 people who aren’t working today,” Markell replied, noting the official number of unemployed Delawareans.
Shared sacrifice. Let’s make it crystal clear. The only people who are being asked to sacrifice and to ‘share’ the sacrifice are those people with the least to share. It is time for his Administration to excise the platitude ‘shared sacrifice’ from its lexicon, because (a) it’s not true, (b) they admit it’s not true (return to the top of this article) and (c) by now, everybody who is paying attention knows it’s not true. Rather than demand that those whose taxes were cut precipitously during the ‘good’ years sacrifice even a little bit during these ‘lean’ years, Gov. Markell is coming perilously close to demonizing, albeit in more polite terms than Wisconsin’s Governor Walker, those workers from whom he would take the most. And, despite his reputation for being detail-oriented, he is ‘task(ing)the General Assembly with coming up with $100 mill in cuts over the next five years’. The Governor employs all the experts, he should deliver the bad news rather than ‘tasking’ legislators with doing it. Harry Truman was wrong, guess the buck(s) don’t stop at the top any more.
Yep, somehow it must be state workers’ fault that 35,000 Delawareans are unemployed. Some who, by the way, are former state workers. I don’t for one minute fault Markell’s job creation efforts, I fault him for ginning up this intellectually-dishonest imagined standoff between the unemployed and state workers. While the Plutocrats on the Hill open up some fine Bordeaux from their extensive wine cellars.
Let’s now head about an hour to the south until we arrive at:
Legislative Hall- Wednesday’s Joint Finance Committee Hearing on the Department of Health & Social Services:
Let’s just excerpt a couple of highlights from J. L. Miller’s story in today’s News-Journal:
The $3 million general assistance program will be abolished if Markell has his way. About 3,700 unemployable people with virtually no other income receive the assistance.
“These adults are unemployable but nevertheless, they are more able to find resources that could help them,” Archangelo said, adding that she endorses Markell’s $1.5 million transition program.
OK, folks, do you see the false choice that the Markell Administration puts forth here? They frame the choice as either money for needy children or money for the chronically-unemployable. Money for both, they lament, is not an option. They claim that, with a little help from a transition program, these chronically-unemployable, mentally-ill, homeless people should have no trouble navigating the social safety net. Based on all the hand-wringing by the well-meaning folks at DHSS, you’d think that no other option is available to them.
Except, of course, it is, they know it, but the Governor has made clear he will not consider it. And that’s demanding that ‘shared sacrifice’ means requiring those who have made out like (and, in many cases, have actually been) bandits to pay a little more. This is a $3 million program, for bleep’s sake. And the Governor’s proposed budget is full of tiny cuts like this which makes a mockery of the term ‘shared sacrifice’.
By the way, do you know what that $95 goes for? By DHSS’ own admission, it goes for (a) bus transportation; (b) prescription co-pays; and (c) personal hygiene products. When you think about it, this is brilliant leveraging by the Markell Administration. If the clients can’t get transportation to and from the services they need, the state can cut back on those services as well, hey, maybe even DART; if they can’t afford prescriptions without co-pays, they’ll have to do without, they can die sooner, and save the state some more money; and the well-scrubbed and well-coiffed Billionaires on the Hill will never come in contact with poor people with poor hygiene b/c they can’t afford to take the bus to Greenville. Everybody wins except those with nothing more to sacrifice!
Based on what we’ve seen, Gov. Markell’s definition of ‘shared sacrifice’ means (a) pitting state employees against the unemployed; and (b) needy children vs. the chronically unemployed, many of whom just happen to be mentally-ill and/or homeless. I’m sure you can come up with your own examples of false choices being floated.
I find the resolute refusal of Governor Markell to require shared sacrifice from all Delawareans to be unconscionable. When times were good, the State ensured that those who were at the top of the food chain benefited disproportionately. We created a flat tax just for them. Everybody else got some benefits as well, but they were crumbs compared to baguettes the wealthy use to sop up their foie gras with. Now that times are bad, the State is taking the few crumbs left from those who have nothing else, while making sure that the wealthy live high off the hog. Hey, some gold-plated plutocrat just might bless us with his largesse, which is French for ‘large ass’.
Speaking of which, when it comes to calls from this administration for shared sacrifice, I will respond just like that fictional plutocrat, and all the real ones, for that matter:
Shared sacrifice, my ass.