Suicidal Failure in Frankfort

Ten-plus percent unemployment, $1.5 billion deficit, widespread poverty and a 19th-century economy based on lethally destructive and dying industries - what will it take for the Kentucky General Assembly to face up to the crying need for comprehensive tax reform?

Apparently a much bigger catastrophe than we already face.

Via Jake and Joe, Jonathan Meador of Leo Weekly explains:

Of the paltry 55 bills produced by the general assembly this session and signed into law by Gov. Steve Beshear, virtually none of them address the commonwealth’s most dire problems — measures to expand health care access to children, strengthen anti-domestic violence laws, reduce pollution from surface-top mining, and (most dire of all) adequately balancing Kentucky’s $1.5 billion budgetary shortfall without cannibalizing essential social services have all failed to reach the governor’s desk this year.

With only two days remaining on the legislative calendar, and a host of good bills hanging in the balance, Kentucky’s contingent of progressive politicians are largely disappointed with what they feel to be another wasted 60 days in Frankfort.

“We did very poorly,” admits Sen. Kathy Stein, D-Lexington, on behalf of the legislature. “It’s been … what’s the old saying? Slow as molasses in winter … I don’t have much memory of anything good happening this session, because we generally hold the important stuff until the very end, as part of the horse trading that goes on behind closed doors.”

By “important stuff,” Stein of course means the state budget, aka House Bill 290, whose current 369-page incarnation — depending on which chamber gets their way — will either 1) bankrupt the state by spending borrowed money on construction projects, or 2) screw over the state’s poor, elderly and sick in a desperate attempt to stop the hemorrhaging. A true “lose-lose” scenario, if ever there was one.

SNIP

“What we should’ve done,” Stein continues, “is listen to Jim Wayne. He has a very good tax reform proposal out there that should be looked at.”

Stein is referring to Rep. Jim Wayne. D-35, sponsor of House Bill 13, which would establish a progressive tax scale and, according to Kentucky Legislative Resource Council estimates, would do more to alleviate the budget crisis than H.B. 290 while providing a $97 million tax cut for 350,000 working-class families every year.

“Unfortunately,” says Stein, “(anti-tax demagogue) Grover Norquist has everyone scared to death that he’s going to have a press conference about you if you support tax reform, saying you want to raise taxes on everybody.”

This lack of political will, as Wayne suggests, shouldn’t be surprising. The Louisville representative says there was some interest in his tax reform bill, H.B. 13, at the beginning of the session, but the interest quickly faded in lieu of electoral concern.

“What happened was we have 43 Democrats up for re-election,” Wayne says. “When you have an election year, the leaders don’t want their constituents thinking they’re going to raise their taxes. So they get scared.”

Read the whole thing.