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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Wisconsin Lawmakers Raise Taxes

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Gov. Jim Doyle and other Democrats are adamant that their state budget proposal won't hurt middle class taxpayers. But don't tell that to cell phone users, smokers and property owners.

Taxes and fees on all of them will go up under the state's new two-year budget that passed out of committee on Friday and could clear the Democratic-controlled Legislature next month.

But Doyle and fellow Democrats say Republican critics are grasping at straws to find tax increases that will affect average, working class people in the budget that balances a $6.6 billion budget hole.

Doyle refused to rely on the simple solution -- raising sales or income tax rates -- to come up with the cash quickly to balance the shortfall. Instead, he and lawmakers cobbled together a mixture of tax and fee increases, cuts to state agencies, schools, local governments and others, federal stimulus money and a variety of other accounting moves to balance it.

Under the plan, cigarette taxes will go up 75 cents a pack, cell phone users will have to pay 75 cents more per month, income taxes will be raised on those earning over $300,000 a year and property taxes paid by homeowners will go up about 3.2 percent this year. - Todays TMJ 4 Story

I don't know who they are trying to fool. When you raise taxes across the board on so much who do you think is paying all these taxes? It isn't just the rich who have cell phones, smoke, own property or any of the other things that they have raised taxes on.

The worst part about the whole smelly deal is, they did all of this in the dead of night behind closed doors away from the media and the people that they were elected to represent. Doyle and his thugs in Madison have greased it up good and shoved it right in to the citizens of Wisconsin.

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