D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray wants to raises taxes on residents by $127 million in order to close a $322 million budget gap caused entirely by the city’s excessive spending. How excessive? Over the past eight years, the District government’s budget increased more than 65 percent. During that same period, median personal income in D.C. rose 37 percent, but was offset by a 24 percent increase in the cost of living. So while the District government was spending 65 percent more than it did in 2002, taxpayers’ real income was increasing just 13 percent. But instead of cutting what amounts to about 5 percent of the District’s $9.3 billion fiscal 2011 budget, the mayor wants the city’s taxpayers to kick in 39 percent of the difference — even though the $322 million budget gap was clearly caused by unsustainable levels of spending by previous administrations. Gray attempts to disguise his attempt to keep the party going by playing the “rich” against the “poor.” So his budget proposal raises the income tax rate for city residents who earn more than $200,000 and also slashes $4 million for the homeless, thus setting up a cynical, but all-too-predictable dynamic: Anyone who objects to a tax increase is automatically tarred and feathered as being in favor of throwing homeless families back on the streets.
Meanwhile, tax-and-spenders like Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham — who facetiously claims that any spending cuts would be “devastating” — conveniently ignore the fact that the city is in debt for many council-approved special interest projects, including the Nationals baseball stadium and the Verizon Center, that should have been built entirely with private financing.
D.C. Council Chairman Kwame Brown, who promised during his campaign that he would not raise taxes, has a major opportunity to assert his power by rejecting Gray’s false dichotomy and insuring that his tax increase proposal goes nowhere but File 13. In March, Brown told NewsChannel 8 that “we need to cut programs that don’t work and reallocate those dollars to programs that do work.” Now is the time for the chairman to make good on his word.
However, if Gray, Brown and the D.C. Council are incapable of trimming even 5 percent from a bloated budget that’s increased 65 percent in eight years without raising taxes or abandoning the homeless, the city is obviously in need of outside intervention, again.
