My fellow taxpayers,

Wednesday is tax day…are you paying “your fair share”? Here in MoCo apparently many folks on the Left think the answer is NO. A few folks actually come up to our booths and events and say they’d like to pay more, and that they enjoy paying taxes. And of course the Powers-that-be often agree with them.

Union Teachers have packed the Council and Executive forums to say “Moore please” except maybe not the please part, but you catch the drift. We were lied to for many years that MoCo had a great diverse economy, not at all reliant on Federal largess. Recent cutbacks by the national government have shown that to be a farce – with our county even offering to be the employer of last resort for folks who held positions deemed non-necessary.

So many residents and federal retirees are beholden to the Feds that we have a skewed voter base here. Years ago, when I worked at the Congressional Budget Office, I had dinner with Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, an author of the Gramm-Rudman act. He told a funny rhyme, it went “Don’t tax you, don’t tax me…tax that man behind the tree!” The gist of it was tax everyone else and leave me alone! Of course they don’t – look at New York City under socialist Mamdani, and even the Mamdani County Council and Executive here. There’s not a tax they don’t like. And with single party government going on twenty years, there’s no one to say “No”, they’ll be pilloried, called a "Trumper" and thrown out in the next election.

So who is beholden to the high tax state for their well being? Is it former government workers on a government provided pension? Is it illegal immigrants living on food stamps, assistance, public schooling and untaxed cash jobs? Is it folks working for government contractors, whose entire company income is funded by the Feds, the State or the County? Is it workers for CASA, or one of the immigrant advocacy groups whose leadership lives on payouts from government paid shell companies? Is it public health corporations dependent on public health payments? Maybe a compendium of all of them. Folks who work the private sector are the source of money, folks in the public sector are the beneficiaries. Even private housing must compete with government funded public providers – the so called affordable housing the government builds is ten times the cost of private housing, and rising exponentially.

All we want is for help to go to the TRULY NEEDY, but that number has gone through the roof in recent years. We WANT to help those in need – and provide for them if they can’t provide for themselves. Yet it’s often easier to move to a RED state and pay less for a better lifestyle than be taxed Moore and Moore by an all-consuming state like Maryland, and County like Montgomery.

 A better method?

• Spend only what you need
• Tax only what you need
• Support private industry and capitalism
• Don’t encourage folks to stay on public assistance as a voting block
• Make industry, wealth and success the norm
• Make the need for help and assistance rare

Progress, success, education and wealth are what we need, not a higher tax burden to sap enthusiasm and make folks move out of state. Too much to ask? I don’t think so.

Look at our candidates for office, choose the ones you like and support them, donate to them, vote for them and help them get elected. I guarantee you won’t regret it.

Tell me what virtues there are in one-party government, high public spending and excessive taxation. Is there a better way? Write to me at [email protected]

Dennis Melby