You may have seen Senator Sprouse yesterday on “Outlook,” a West Virginia PBS evening program hosted by Beth Vorhees. During the show, Beth interviewed House Speaker Bob Kiss and Senator Sprouse on their views on the upcoming session and on cutting the food sales tax.

There are several common misconceptions offered by the Democratic leadership that Speaker Kiss gave in his interviews. Although I was unable to copy his words verbatim, his arguments went like this.

We must pay down the debt first

At face value it seems irresponsible to offer a tax decrease when the state is in debt, but the Democratic leadership forgets to tell you that the Legislature has a payment plan where they pay each of their debts monthly. When state accountants declare a surplus in the budget, they are factoring in the debts payments. When we have a tax cut, the debt payments will not cease. While paying your debts is a laudable goal, no Democrat yet has indicated they want the surplus to go toward the debt. They just state there shouldn’t be tax cuts until the debt is paid. See the difference? The Democrats hope you don’t.

No legislator is against tax cuts
If that were the case, more West Virginians would have money in their pockets. Our state has the 13th highest tax rate in the country. I wonder who voted for the tax increases?

Tax cuts are an issue capitalized by opportunists who just want their 30 seconds of fame
Republicans (and to his credit, Democrat Senator Larry Rowe) have offered tax cuts in a myriad of forms for 10 consecutive years.

For the sales tax alone, Legislators offered many bills seeking to reduce or eliminate it:

13 in 1995
8 in 1996
9 in 1997
9 in 1998
13 in 1999
18 in 2000
24 in 2001
32 in 2002
23 in 2003
23 in 2004
17 in 2005

A total of 189 bills in 10 years.

If they were just opportunist, why would they have advocated something that got minimal publicity for a decade?

The Legislature has cut taxes in the last ten years
It is true that the Legislature has cut taxes in the last ten years; but they have also raised them. The extra $3 dollar fee on your cell phone bill is no tax cut.

Whether the tax cuts of the last 10 years are greater than the tax increases is for someone else to figure out. I just know they haven’t been exclusively cutting.

If we cut taxes, we cannot balance our budget
While Beth Vorhees was interviewing Senator Sprouse, she remarked that Speaker Kiss had raised concerns that the state could not afford a tax cut. Senator Sprouse pointed out that when the Democrats raised the sales tax in 1989, no one asked if West Virginians could afford a tax and when they raised the gas tax in 1993, no one bothered to see if that would strain the West Virginia worker’s budget. He said it was time to focus on the citizen’s budget for a change.

Amen.