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Wednesday, March 05, 2003

Bill Richardson Emulates
Reagan's Tax Cuts

from the Albuquerque Journal

   
JUST AS Bill Clinton was the best Republican president since Dwight D. Eisenhower, Bill Richardson is establishing his legacy as the best Republican governor of New Mexico ever.

   
Look at his first baby steps as chief executive officer of the state, with a willing Democratic Legislature firmly in his back pocket. Within a week, Richardson was on his way to Silicon Valley to send a signal that New Mexico is open for business.

   
GOP leaders have responded. Larry Willard, CEO of Wells Fargo Bank New Mexico and staunch GOP supporter, approvingly speaks of the personal commitments that Richardson has made to him. Perhaps one of those commitments was to make a regressive tax cut the first priority of his administration.

   
In a salute to the Reaganomics of yore, Richardson has blasted through a tax cut package heavily skewed to relieving the public burden on the rich. New Mexico taxes are high. They should be lowered, but not for the rich or the corporations.

   
On a national level, we've seen how Reaganomics trickle-down theory really works the rich get enormously richer, the poor get poorer, the middle class stagnates. This is not what New Mexico needs.

   
I'll take my tax cut. My wife and I can take our $89 and invest in some Kmart stock. I'd rather have the $5,000 plus that couples who make over $100,000 will get. I'd settle for the same percentage cut that the wealthy couples get 5.46 percent or over $2,000.

   
This is only the first phase in liberal Richardson's regressive tax slash. His goal is to relieve the tax burden on the wealthy even more. ...

   
We cut taxes for the wealthy and throw kids off Medicaid. This certainly doesn't sound like the legacy of FDR. Welcome to Reagan's New Mexico.