Warning of impending doom from the affects of Hurrican Katrina, Senator Walt Helmick said we should put the brakes on the sales tax. “We need to slow down this train a little bit,” Helmick said. Not only is he against a total abolishment of the food tax, he now says no to a meager 1% reduction.

If Katrina has jeopardized the future of the West Virginia government so severely that we cannot afford to give a tax cut to the citizens, then let us also have no additional spending.

If giving money back to everyone in the form of tax breaks is wrong, then pay raises for teachers should also be avoided. Helmick would doubtless agree that teachers need a pay raise, but so does the West Virginia worker who suffers under a tax burden that ranks our state 13th in the nation.

His duplicity in agreeing to government spending while shunning government reduction merely reveals his priorities — or to express more accurately — what his priorities are not: the taxpayer.

Senator Helmick has succinctly shown that he cares for the state’s budget over the West Virginian citizen’s budget. He forgets that if a citizen has no money, the state will have nothing as well.

Besides all that, simple math defeats his position. We have a surplus exceeding $400 million and a complete reduction of the food tax would only cost $150 million, leaving $250 million.

The problem is that Democrats just like Senator Helmick have successfully tried to “slow down this train” for over 70 years. Now we compete with Mississippi for last place in everything good. The train has pretty much stopped and it’s time to push out brake-stomping bureaucrats like Senator Walt Helmick and get this train moving again.

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Update: Jim Mullins also has an excellent post on Senator Helmick along with suggestions on what taxes need eliminating or reducing.