Martin O'Malley - Let's Raise the Sales Tax AGAIN!!!

Martin O'Malley. What a guy. There's not a tax hike he doesn't like. Alcohol tax. Sales tax. Another sales tax. Thumb tacks.

It's really frustrating to hear him talk lately. WBAL radio keeps playing a clip of him saying to the effect that we really don't have any other choice but to raise taxes because we've already cut over $6 Billion from the budget over the last few years and you get what you pay for. I wish the tax payers of Maryland got what they paid for.

The truth is, Martin O'Malley has NOT cut the budget by $6 billion. At least he hasn't cut the budget with regard to the amount of money the state spent the previous years with the exceptin of a $200 million cut between 2010 and 2011. But we're talking billions of dollars here, so millions in nearly insignificant. Here is a list of the total state spending (as reported on Red Maryland) on O'Malley's watch.

2008: 29.4 billion

2009: 30.7 billion

2010: 32.2 billion

2011. 32.0 billion

2012: 34.2 billion

I don't see any $6 billion decreases here. So where is this phantom $6 billion coming from? I suspect that every year Governor Martin "Leapin' Liar" O'Malley came up with a wish-list of the billions of dollars that he wants to spend, then cuts his own list and calls that 'cutting the budget'. "I want to spend $45 billion this year, but I'll reduce what I want to spend to $35 billion. Now I can say that I cut the budget by $9 billion!!!" Does that sound like his kind of crap?

Now O'Malley is running our of revenue to spend on his pet projects, so he wants to increase the state sales tax for the second time during his tenure as governor. I don't think any sitting governor of Maryland has ever raised the sales tax twice. What a wonderful dubious honor, Guv'nah!

O'Malley defends his massive tax increase proposals by saying that Maryland has the 40th lowest state sales tax in the Union. However, of those states with higher sales taxes, Washington, Nevada, Wyoming, South Dakota, Texas, Alaska, New Hampshire, Tennessee, and Florida have no state income tax.

Additionally, according to the Tax Foundation, Marylanders are already burdened with one of the highest overall tax rates in the country, surpassed only by New Jersey (11.8%), New York (11.7%), and Connecticut (11.1%).

Now comes the best part. Martin O'Malley will spin his latest massive tax increase on the struggling middle class and poor working people of Maryland by saying it's "a penny increase". I had an long-standing battle with the liberal pundits on Wikipedia during the last state sales tax increase. I would write, "Anne Kaiser voted to increase the sales tax by 20%". It would then be changed to "Anne Kaiser voted to increase the sales tax by 1 penny." Technically, my statement is more correct. To make the second statement correct, you would need to add "for each dollar spent".

Now Martin O'Malley wants to "technically" raise the state sales tax by another 16.7%. The two sales tax increases will amount to a 40% increase in the sales tax since he's been governor. Liberal cannot argue with the math. But as they say, don't let the facts get in the way of good tax increase.