Another huge mistake in GA legislature

My disagreements with the direction of the Georgia legislature and the governor are legion.   Among the worst, and the ones I care most about, are the misnamed religious freedom bill, the open gun carry on college campuses, and the refusal to expand Medicaid using federal funds.   The excuse that we can't afford to expand Medicaid is the most egregious and hypocritical.

The facts have been pointed out again and again (billions of federal dollars coming into the state, 70,000 new jobs, health care for 400,000, saving rural hospitals that are closing, etc.) -- and the facts just don't make a dent in the Republicans' stubborn refusal to accept anything Obama.

But now they are about to pour salt into that wound.   Holding tight to their mantra that the state simply cannot afford the small cost to the state for such huge benefits, they are now on the verge of passing a cut in state taxes that is "roughly equivalent to that needed to fund Medicaid expansion, according to AJC columnist Jay Booker.

"We don't have enough money to improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of our own people;  we do have enough money to finance a tax cut that will largely benefit wealthier Georgians. . . ."

Bookman then explains that the tax cut is set up to happen automatically, based on how the economy is doing;  but it also means that, because it's set up as a constitutional amendment, it would continue in effect unless another constitutional amendment is passed.

"SR 756 must now go to the House, where it must receive a two-thirds vote to pass.  If that happens, it will appear on the ballot in November [as a constitutional amendment, it will require only a simply majority from the voters].  Its proponents are counting on voters not comprehending its real impact, and based on what we're seeing in the larger political sphere these days, that expectation is probably valid," Bookman writes.

This is reprehensible.  It's all part of a larger plan to shift state revenue sources from income tax to sales taxes, which puts the burden on lower income people who spend a larger portion of their smaller incomes on necessities.   Once again, it's government by the special interests, for the benefit of the wealthy.

Ralph