In the second half of the interview, Blaskovitz asked his pal Bobby for a preview of the 2020 General Assembly session. Here are some highlights (emphases mine):
The Delaware Economic Financial Advisory Council set the amount of revenue that the state can expect to receive in any given year. We raised the estimates by some $200 million, about $120 million more in this fiscal year and about $80 million more in next fiscal year. So that means the General Assembly and the governor have about $200 million that they can spend over the next six months and into next year as they put the budget together. …
[T]he debate will be over whether or not we spend those $200 million on goods and services and things that people think the state needs to be doing. Or whether we will put more of that money aside in what the governor has called his benchmarking process, which is identified dollars that need to be put ahead, put aside in addition to the rainy day fund, in addition to the 98% spending limit. And looking forward toward that day when we don’t have as many revenues coming in as we do now. [I]t’s going to be for the conservatives and the Republicans and the governor, who is fiscally conservative I think, to put some of those dollars away. So that will be a very spirited discussion and debate over the next six months.
The problem with this should be obvious: Socking away today’s taxes for tomorrow’s expenses is unfair to today’s taxpayers, whose taxes should fund government year by year, not in perpetuity. In effect, this year’s taxpayers are being overtaxed so some future year’s won’t have to pay for their services. And no, they’re not all the same people — folks move into and out of the state all the time. It’s yet another form of incumbency protection. Instead of stashing the money for another year, the state should pay down some of its considerable debt, which represents more incumbent cowardice — they borrowed the money because they were too scared of the public to raise taxes directly.
Byrd went on to demonstrate the cluelessness of “fiscal conservatives.”
We’ve got to figure out what that next big thing is in economic development. Delaware is a low tax state. We are attracting many retirees from the mid-Atlantic and even up in the Northeast and the New England area. We got a lot of people moving in here and retirees, because of our tax system, are not paying a lot of taxes, but they’re using a lot of our services. And as I sit back and look at it, I think that’s the biggest issue we have to solve.
Jesus H. Christ in a green eyeshade, is this really that hard for you to figure out, you large-handled tool? If people are paying less in taxes than it costs us in services, you need to RAISE THEIR TAXES! For a start, we could stop offering tax breaks to people based on their age. Seniors are moving here in part because we offer property tax breaks to seniors. Is it really so hard to figure out that maybe we should STOP DOING THAT?