|
 avid
Firestone's front-page story in yesterday's New York Times
told the story of how Tennessee's pigheaded refusal to enact an
income tax had gotten it into a fiscal crisis ("Fiscal Stature
of Tennesse Slumps in War over Taxes"). The horrible consequences
of this crisis are detailed: rising tuition at state schools, mental-health
programs "slashed," schools worried "about finding
money for building projects." Sources are quoted fretting that
Tennessee is going to become "like Alabama." A chart ranks
Tennessee forty-eighth among states in per-capita tax payments.
What Firestone
didn't mention is how fast the state government's spending has grown.
According to the Tennessee Institute of Public Policy, it's up 9.7
percent over the last year — following a 10.4 percent increase
the year before. This is not the portrait of a fiscal anorexic.
Firestone does
allude to this growth, but only to report that most of it was caused
by federal mandates or court orders and thus was out of the state
government's control. According to TIPP, however, the biggest budget-buster
over the last ten years has been Tenncare, the state's experiment
in socialized medicine. Even with federal help, covering 25 percent
of the state's population gets expensive. The second fastest growing
item is education. Tennessee doesn't need an income tax to solve
its fiscal problems; it needs politicians willing to put the budget
on a diet.
|
