A Radical Remedy for Texas' Washington Problem.

This post has been updated on April 10, 2013, find it at the end of this article.

The Houston Chronicle article by Richard Dunham entitled " Hutchison's retirement is big loss for Texas", and printed in Sunday's Star-Telegram, illustrates one of the Catch-22's of federal financing.  Although Dunham focused on the money that Texas was going to lose because Kay Bailey Hutchison would no longer be around to bring it back home, he inadvertently laid out the reasons that federal spending is so hard to control.

He describes John Culberson, the Republican representative, and "Taxpayer Hero" of the group Citizens against Government Waste,

from Houston and Culberson's philosophy of "if the federal government is going to spend tax dollars, Texas deserves its fair share", which, it is safe to assume, means that a politician who is concerned about his state and constituents should be willing to do just about anything to make sure that Texas takes its fair and rightful place at the federal money trough.

This attitude when multiplied by the thousands of politicians in America who feel the same way results in an enormous pressure, and reinforcement for the federal government to spend, and continue to spend money.  It also results in political butt kissing by federal, and to a slightly lesser extent state politicians of Washington elite heinies which pushes the power buttons of the aforementioned elites and revs up the spending cycle even more.  Making it well nigh impossible to reduce the national debt.  Politicians don't even bother with the national debt, they set their sights on reducing the deficit which is only the amount of debt growth.

It seems to me the only way to stop this cycle is to prevent the money from going to Washington in the first place.  If you take civil disobedience, rebellion, and revolution off the table, you're left with only one other choice that might remedy the problem, at least for a while.  It's hard for me to say this but that choice is a STATE INCOME TAX.  Since I've never filed from any other state but Texas and haven't paid a whole lot of attention to what other states do I'm not real clear on this but I think the amount of state income tax that a person pays is deducted from his federal income tax.  In other words if your state gets your money before Washington does, your taxes are (somewhat) reduced and the state keeps it .

So there you have it, Washington removes tax dollars from taxpayers, state politicians want to get some of the money back, so they lick the soles of the Washington boot.  This makes Washington feel good, taxes are raised, more money comes in and out, boot licking all around.  Rinse, repeat until the nation goes over the cliff.  A Texas state income tax can prevent some of this money from going to Washington in the first place, at least until the tax code changes.

Note: if you spot any gaps in logic or fact in this article please let me know.  I believe the beginning of wisdom is the acknowledgment of one's own fallibility and ignorance.  Joel Downs


 Update, April 10, 2013.
  I've had misgivings from the beginning about this, and after I uploaded the article, I started to think about how a tax would be implemented. That's when I realized that a state doesn't just say "Abracadabra" and have the money appear in its treasury. An entire bureaucracy has to be created and staffed to process and collect the new tax, businesses have to be forced to withhold more money from their employees paychecks with appropriate fines and prison terms for noncompliance, plus a million other details need attending to. And to start it off, every step of this undertaking has to be planned and legislated, which would first require a lot of very smart people working very hard for a long time, then require arm-twisting, log rolling, compromise, bribery, and no telling what other kinds of political mischief, all of which would have to be accomplished in 140 days on a semiannual basis. Bottom line; a state income tax is a bad idea, was a bad idea, will always be a bad idea.  So, I am withdrawing it.  I am somewhat encouraged because, when taken from the abstract, to the reality, it turns out to be a very hard thing to implement which if you don't like state income tax is a good thing.

Of course, this leaves us with the original problem of what to do about our politicians dutifully trying to get some of their constituent's money back from the federal government and in the process submitting to the federal boot on the neck.