Saturday, Sept. 24, 2011 | 2 a.m.
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Some politicians say government should not raise taxes but instead should just cut. Yet a poll shows that a majority of Nevadans are willing to have their taxes increased instead of seeing further cuts in education and health care. Can you explain that? Tell us what you think in a letter to the editor. Letters to the editor should be no more than 250 words and include the writer’s name, address and telephone number. Anonymous letters will not be printed. E-mail: letters to the editor. Mail: 2360 Corporate Circle, Third Floor Henderson, NV 89074 Fax: 383-7264.
A poll released this week says that Nevadans are pessimistic about the way the state and the economy are going, which is understandable given the high unemployment here.
But as David McGrath Schwartz reported, the poll for the Retail Association of Nevada, a conservative business and lobbying group active in Carson City, also showed that Nevadans don’t want to see government slashed.
Fifty-seven percent of the people who were interviewed in the poll said they would rather have their taxes increased than see further cuts to education and health care.
“Support for raising taxes to address the budget shortfall is at an all-time high,” pollster Glen Bolger wrote in a presentation.
No one likes to see tax hikes — the poll reported that a majority of Nevadans said they thought raising taxes would result in job losses and harm efforts to diversify the economy here. Yet the fact that a majority of Nevadans said they would rather raise taxes than cut education and health care is notable. It undercuts the anti-tax rhetoric of many conservatives, who have refused to consider anything other than budget cuts.
Many conservative politicians have signed no-new-taxes pledges, and their wide definition of what a new tax is has handcuffed the nation from exploring a wide variety of options to solve the budget problems. The result has been a stalemate in Congress that has only exacerbated the nation’s economic crisis.
Many conservatives have tried to frame the debate as either increase taxes or cut budgets. But people understand this isn’t an either-or situation. There can be both cuts and increases.
One of the important things that politicians need to understand is the consequences of their actions. It’s easy to say that government is bloated and needs to be cut, but what would those cuts be, exactly? Many politicians like to talk about cutting “entitlements,” but what does that mean? Unemployment insurance? Social Security? Medicare? Education? And what do those cuts do to the average American?
Nevadans have felt the brunt of the nation’s economic downturn, and they understand that government budgets have to be cut. But they also know the value of important government services.
That’s certainly one of the reasons why Nevadans are willing to see their own taxes increased rather than see further cuts to education and health care.
Elected officials should understand this: The blind ideology that has marked politics won’t cut it anymore. People want to see solutions, and they’re willing to do their part.
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