As Kansas lawmakers went to work this morning, a coalition of Demo-crats and moderate Re-publicans hoped to pass a sales tax hike that would bring in about $300 million additional and the Senate continued to hold out hope for a combination of tax increases that would raise $350 million.
Either plan would bring in enough to hold school financing and social services spending about at this year’s level — but just barely.
That’s the good news for Kansas kids and Kansans in need. Here’s the bad news:
Monday night a Kansas Senate committee voted to tackle a worsening budget deficit by dropping proposals to in-crease the tax on cigarettes by 55 cents a pack and quadrupling the tax on other tobacco products.
Committee chairman Sen. Jay Emler explained that legislators in border counties worried that higher taxes would send shoppers across the border and that they might buy something in addition to cigarettes while there.
The committee had reworked its budget plan in reaction to the news that April’s tax collections came in $65 million short of expectations, worsening the deficit picture by that much.
So, in effect, the good senators decided to raise less money rather than more to deal with a higher prospective deficit.
After they stop shaking their heads in disbelief, perhaps some in the state’s higher chamber will decide to move forward rather than backward in dealing with the state’s budget realities.
Rather than drop the proposed 55-cent-a-pack increase — which would raise the Kansas tax only to the national average — the levy should be raised to $1.
It then would bring in more desperately needed money and also cause a few smokers to quit while persuading even more youngsters not to start — a win-win-win result.
(Would border retailers be hurt? Perhaps a little. But trying to match other states’ taxes on smokes and gasoline only leads to a race to the bottom. In addition, it has been proved that higher tobacco taxes cut tobacco use. Smoking is the nation’s largest cause of preventable death and illness. A strong argument can be made that a vote against higher to-bacco taxes is a vote for emphysema, lung cancer and chronic bronchitis — and higher Medicaid spending.)
The Senate Ways and Means Committee also should take a hard look at the state’s income tax and consider creating a new, higher bracket for those with incomes over $200,000 a year and maybe another for those earning more than $300,000.
It also would be a sound idea to pay for a new transportation program with increases in the highway fuels tax. Considering how volatile gas and diesel prices have been over the past six years, a 10-cent-a-gallon increase would not be noticed a month after it was imposed.
The goal should be to raise enough money to prevent damaging cuts in school funding, social services and other essential state services. Kan-sas can’t get from here to there without substantial tax increases. To those who argue that tax increases would slow the pace of recovery, let it be noted that there is nothing in our economic history to substantiate that claim.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
