Cloud control: Let’s get ‘cirrus’ about budget woes

It's "Fiddler", William. Geez.

If you are gonna dance, someone has to pay the fidler. It appears that the fidler was getting paid yesterday and will continue to be paid in the future. Change is coming via the vote, and it has already started. As Paul Harvey used to say, "standby for news". The economy will get better when the idiots stop giving away the store. Taxes in themselves are not bad, but, how they are spend in this instance is almost criminal especially by the nuts in Washington, DC.

Kerr-McGee, Conoco, GM, Firestone and Mercury Marine all left Oklahoma after tax cuts hit. I thought our economy was supposed to be made better by those cuts? Instead, the economy that was supposed to be made better by the state's tax cuts is now described as a "scary cloud." So why did we have those cuts? Huh? Oh, to make the publishers of this editorial richer.

Is this op-ed about the State’s budget crisis or defending the income tax cuts? Once again the op-ed is filled with half-truths. I’ll address the budget concerns first. State revenues were down in all three major revenue categories (income tax, sales tax and gross production tax) over the last few months, particularly in gross production (oil and gas) tax. This is a function of the energy prices and production and is cyclical in nature. Gross production revenue is off so much that even with significant gains in the other two major categories, the State would probably still be facing a shortfall situation. State revenue data for October will be released next week and will continue to show increasing shortfalls. We are not talking about “cirrus” (which is not a scary looking cloud BTW) issues but serious ones for State Government and the services it provides. Some Legislators and television personalities are complaining about the cut in meals for seniors. While this is certainly a terrible situation for our seniors, what can you expect? The budget keeps getting cut every month so programs and services are going to have to be cut also. The hesitation to tap the Rainy Day Fund is perplexing also. It is obvious that these funds will be needed this fiscal year so why wait, at the expense of programs, services, RIFs and furloughs. State agencies will continue to have to cut until the funds are tapped.

Next, let’s talk about the personal income tax cuts and the half-truths in the op-ed. Yes, the downturn in the economy has influenced personal income tax collections, but so have the tax cuts. While gross production revenue (as I mentioned above) is the major shortfall, next is personal income tax receipts. The D.O. used a percentage for personal income tax declines. A 16.6% decline in a $2.2 billion dollar revenue category is pretty significant. What is not being said by the D.O. is that these tax cuts have effectively “constrained” any growth in person income tax collections when times were good. This constraint contributed to the State not having any cushion to absorb any economic downturn. When the downturn hit, State services and programs were more severely affected. While personal income tax collections probably would have been down due to the economic downturn, the tax cuts amplified this shortfall. No doubt about this. I could go on but this post is already too large.