Tax cuts, needed after increases, not the problem

To the editor:

I agree with the main thrust of your recent editorial, "Missouri needs better budgeting process." But some ideas need clarification. You imply that the booming economy of the 1990s is solely responsible for the huge increase in state revenue and spending and that Missouri's tax cuts were a response to the economic boom. That is far from being the whole story.

The 1990s were a decade of tax increases as well. First, Gov. John Ashcroft and the legislature raised fuel taxes. Gov. Mel Carnahan and the legislature raised income taxes. Since we didn't get to vote on either of those tax increases, the revenue they raised counted against the Hancock Amendment's revenue limit. Those tax increases -- not just economic growth -- produced excess revenue that was at first returned to us in the form of refunds. The legislature and governor were loathe to allow the refunds to continue. So the tax cuts in the latter half of the 1990s were not primarily a response to economic growth. They were a response to earlier tax increases.

Supporters of ever more spending have taken to claiming that the tax cuts of the 1990s are responsible for the state's current budget problems. They ignore the fact that the tax cuts would most likely not have occurred if not for the earlier tax increases. Those who realize that the state has a spending problem, not a revenue problem, need to do a better job of telling the whole story.

CHIP TAYLOR

Poplar Bluff, Mo.