Hoosiers living in 2017, 2018, 2023, 2025 and beyond should be able to look back on any policy enacted by Indiana legislators in 2013 and say, “That idea made this a better place to live.”
Lawmakers must keep that long-term view in mind as they consider a 10-percent personal-income-tax cut pushed by Gov. Mike Pence.
With the tax cut as a highlighted element of his platform, Pence won November’s election, shifting him from more than a decade as a congressman in Washington to the governor’s job in Indianapolis. Fellow Republicans in the Indiana Legislature, who experienced the tumultuous budget-trimming during the recession that kept the state fiscally solvent, expressed skepticism last fall about Pence’s promise to cut taxes even deeper. Now that Pence has taken office, many remain unconvinced. The state is in position to restore funding for hard-hit K-12 education and neglected roads, they point out.
Pence is unfazed.
His proposed reduction in the individual income tax rate from 3.4 percent to 3.06 percent, over a two-year period, amounts to a $500-million drop in state revenue. Lawmakers wondering how Indiana can invest in its future through funding pre-kindergarten education and beefed-up vocational training in high schools — concepts Pence promotes — with a half-billion fewer dollars in state revenue are apparently missing his big-picture vision.
Such doubts “about having to choose between increased funding for schools or roads and doing tax relief” amount to a “false choice,” Pence said last week.
“I think lower income taxes mean more jobs,” he said, a byproduct that presumably offsets diminished state revenues. Evidence supporting that claim is murky.
Pence builds his case for the tax cut by citing similar plans in other states, such as Ohio, Nebraska and Louisiana. “We are in a competition. Indiana is in the pole position,” he told the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, “but other states are not standing still.” With states dueling to attract prospective employers shopping for the location of a new factory or corporate headquarters, each must play to win in the race for the lowest tax rates, the thinking goes.
A Feb. 4 report in the Wall Street Journal — a national publication serving a broad corporate readership — took note of that trend, too. The story also connects dots to 2016, the next presidential election. Conservative governors of states with Republican-dominated state legislatures want to slash income taxes and government spending beyond the recession-induced cutbacks. Such tactics could impress voters in 2016 enough to reverse the GOP’s electoral fortunes and return a Republican to the White House. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback bluntly told the WSJ, “My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, ‘See, we’ve got a different way, and it works.’”
The story calls the strategy a “gamble,” while also pointing out the potential for Brownback, Pence and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to become 2016 Republican presidential candidates.
Regardless of its intent, the tax cut idea needs intense scrutiny in Indiana. The state’s vibrancy relies on more than low tax rates. Nearly 1 million Hoosiers lack the post-high school training to work in a high-tech industry. Fixing that problem alone requires more than minimal funding increases to public schools, colleges and workforce development centers. A better educated populace reaps benefits for decades. Kids entering pre-K classes this fall would graduate from college in 2032. Getting them there will require investment, every year along the way.
That same Wall Street Journal piece included a pragmatic quote from Indiana House Speaker Brian Bosma: “My encouragement to everyone is to look at long-term sustainability and not just an election cycle.” We concur.
Editorials
EDITORIAL: Indiana tax strategy requires prudent, long-term approach
Proposed tax cuts need close scrutiny
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EDITORIAL: Cleaning up voter rolls
It’s not a lot of money in the big scheme of things, but the $2 million designated in the recent session of the General Assembly will begin the messy but necessary process of cleaning up Indiana’s voter registration rolls.
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EDITORIAL: Waging the ‘readiness’ campaign
Almost every Hoosier who starts college intends to finish. Unfortunately, those who arrive on campus unprepared in key academic areas are far less likely to fulfill that aspiration.
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EDITORIAL: Insult to an independent press
Distrust of government secrecy has been elevated to an exceptional level with the disclosure the Justice Department covertly examined two months of Associated Press phone records to determine who leaked details to the AP about a foiled terrorist plot.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: Dashing finish for the Sycamores
It’s always thrilling to see Indiana State University’s athletic teams do well in high-level competition, and two specific teams rose to impressive heights last weekend in the Missouri Valley Conference outdoor track and field championships.
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EDITORIAL: Better monitoring needed to prevent local environmental messes
The nasty, hazardous messes lurking in the community raise a bottom-line, red-flag question. Could these environmental problems have been monitored and, thus, prevented?
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EDITORIAL: Memo to U.S.A.: You can ‘SPPRAK’ just as we do in Vigo County
Our kids, truly, are ‘Making a Difference’
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Some words in praise of boring government — Indiana’s
A conservative Republican governor has super majorities in both branches of the legislature. One might suspect such one-party government leads to major changes in public policy. This did not happen in 2013 in Indiana.
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EDITORIAL: Doc’s prescient prescription
Viewed through a 2013 prism, Doc Bowen’s response to the AIDS epidemic looks merely prudent, routine.
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EDITORIAL: Education remains worth the cost
Within the next few weeks, each of the local colleges will have conducted graduation ceremonies. A few days later, a different Class of 2013 will don caps and gowns for commencement — the seniors at five Vigo County high schools. It is still a smart, worthy aspiration for those high school grads to replicate the achievement of those college students by earning a higher-education degree.
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EDITORIAL: Good news for downtown
For decades, it seems, downtown Terre Haute has been in the throes of change
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EDITORIAL: Overall, state budget step in the right direction
For average Hoosiers uninterested in political point-scoring, the budget crafted by the Indiana Legislature inspires only muted, if any, fanfare.
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EDITORIAL: The lessons of organ donation
The range of emotion surrounding life-saving transplantation of a vital organ is extreme. It is the ultimate “good news-bad news” scenario.
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READERS’ FORUM: April 26, 2013
• Pence’s tax cuts benefit wealthiest
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news
This does not qualify as a surprise in any way. But the Wabash Valley’s response to widespread flooding of recent days has been nothing short of impressive, even inspirational.
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EDITORIAL: Still waiting for the jobs reward
The forces in control of Indiana government for most of the past decade need to show some results to Hoosiers in one primary category.
Good-paying jobs. -
MARK BENNETT: Littered with irony: Why do people callously discard their trash, and who are they?
Though they aren’t acknowledged by the U.S. Census Bureau, there are basically two demographic groups of people … Those who would dump their old toilet on the banks of the Wabash River or a rural roadside. And those who wouldn’t.
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EDITORIAL: Doing the dirty work to clean up tossed trash
A first-of-its-kind, coast-to-coast project to remove litter from U.S. roadsides brought the Pick Up America crew through the Wabash Valley two years ago.
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EDITORIAL: Keep school security a local issue
The decision to provide armed security inside a schoolhouse should be made locally.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news
Indiana’s parks need your help.
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EDITORIAL: The return of terror
Emotions today remain strong and raw in wake of Monday’s terror bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.
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EDITORIAL: A solution to distracted driving … stop it … now
You’ve got to stop. You know you do it. It’s a miracle you haven’t caused a tragedy already.
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EDITORIAL: ‘Women of Influence’: 2013 selectees have given much to their communities
For the second year, United Way of the Wabash Valley has teamed up with local sponsors to select and honor a group of women who have made outstanding contributions to their communities, professions and families.
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EDITORIAL: Noteworthy in the news: A new honor for our veterans
A commendation goes out today to state Rep. Clyde Kersey, a Terre Haute Democrat who led the charge this week in the Indiana House of Representatives to pay tribute to the nation’s Purple Heart recipients.
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EDITORIAL: Shifting view on marriage
One could argue, as many have, that Sen. Joe Donnelly did the right thing last week when he dropped his support of government-sanctioned opposition to same-sex marriage. It wasn’t a radical move, considering most Democrats have now made the switch.
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MAX JONES: The American Newspaper: Changing? Yes. Dying? No way!
It happened again this past January when all those “looking at the year ahead” stories started popping up on Internet “news” websites and broadcast “news” programs. Under a provocative headline reading something like “Five industries/businesses doomed to tank in the coming year,” there it was, a prediction based on an unsubstantiated “expert” analysis that the newspaper industry will continue in 2013 to suffer its slide into oblivion.
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EDITORIAL: A chance to change our bad cultural habits
The sight of diligent, eager young people dragging trash out of the Wabash River wetlands is both inspiring and sad.
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EDITORIAL: Maintaining high standards
Standards
It’s the raging buzzword in education circles these days. Everyone insists that higher standards must be met. Anything less is, doggone it, unacceptable. -
Noteworthy in the news
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EDITORIAL: Crack down on dumpers
There is a reason it’s called “illegal” dumping. It’s against the law. And there is a very good reason illegal dumping is against the law.
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Season of Day 2s arrives
Calendars in Cincinnati contain one extra holiday — Opening Day, traditionally the first Monday in April.
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