Cuomo and Brown decide to ‘occupy’ taxpayers.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo
New York and California were once America’s economic growth engines, but their political leaders seem determined to keep them sputtering. Their Democratic Governors are now pushing big new tax increases in the name of soaking the rich and balancing their budgets, as if that same strategy hadn’t put them in their current fiscal straits.
In New York, Andrew Cuomo announced yesterday that he’s agreed with legislative leaders to rewrite the state’s tax code to create four new tax brackets and rates. Mr. Cuomo is pitching this as “tax reform,” but that’s a ruse to disguise the fact that he’s repudiating his 2010 campaign pledge not to raise taxes on anyone while letting a previous income-tax surcharge expire on schedule at the end of this month.
This is the same Governor who said as recently as October 17 that “You are kidding yourself if you think you can be one of the highest-taxed states in the nation, have a reputation for being antibusiness—and have a rosy economic future.” The people who were really kidding themselves are voters who thought Mr. Cuomo believed what he said. With the “occupiers” in the streets of New York, perhaps this is Mr. Cuomo’s first left turn in his campaign for the Democratic Party’s 2016 nomination.
Equally worthy of scorn are the Republicans who run the state Senate who buckled under union pressure because they don’t have many millionaires in their rural districts. New York’s GOP is essentially worthless. Blame, too, goes to the Partnership for New York City, the big business grandees who supported a tax increase and for whom higher taxes are a rounding error. They’re sticking it to small business owners with narrow profit margins.
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