Republicans reject Democrats’ non-solution to Arizona’s growing budget crisis. Their proposal consists of property tax increases, a massive expansion of items and services subject to sales taxation, and a proposed increase in local sales tax collections.
Democrats claim their new budget proposal avoids “high tax increases,” but in fact, they increase the qualifying tax rate to the maximum allowable by law and add a new tax on services. All of this, at a time when any tax increase will further damage Arizona’s economy and make life harder for already struggling families.
Increasing business property taxes is by far the biggest obstacle to attracting and retaining employers in the state. Rather than redressing and learning from past errors by not taking steps to reduce unsustainable government spending, Democrats are asking Arizonans to pay for their fiscal mismanagement.
Instead of proposing reasonable cuts and addressing how spending got over $3 billion dollars out of alignment, Democrats propose to take billions more from Arizonans.
Republicans continue to work on a solution to our fiscal deficit which addresses our structural deficit without raising taxes and further damaging Arizona’s already struggling economy.
