by Rob Roper
The funding mechanism for the Paid Family Leave bill (H. 196) is a 0.93% payroll tax, which would raise about $80 million. The original language of the bill had this tax shared equally between employers and employees. That was until someone remembered that the state and public schools are employers.
The Joint Fiscal Office estimated that if H.196 passed in its original form it would cost the state treasury $2.7 million a year to cover state workers, and school budgets would have to come up with $4.4 million. Nope can’t afford that from the roughly $5.5 billion dollars we spend through the. Much too painful for government to absorb that kind of cost!
Our politicians’ solution: Make the employees pay for all of it!
That’s right, government determined that it can’t afford to come up with 0.0013% out of its budget to fund this program, but you the Vermont worker can afford to pay all of it. Because, you know, you’re so flush after paying your income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, fuel taxes, and all the other niggling taxes and fees Montpelier concocts every year to vacuum money out of your wallet.
If ever there were an example of out of touch, insensitive, arrogant government in action, this is it. Get that veto stamp ready, Governor Scott!
– Rob Roper is president of the Ethan Allen Institute
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Don’t blame me. I never voted for these ignorant idiots. This is typical, they think they have a panacea which ends up as a shot in their foot. So instead of maning up, they pass the buck to the poorest guy in the room, then go home and have a good night’s sleep. And Vermonters vote for these people?????
“The strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many bad measures.” ~ Daniel Webster
I think of this quote with each new government program the Vermont Legislature proposes.
The Democrats will continue to invent government mandates regardless of ability to pay by the private sector.
Burden after burden added onto the private sector has resulted in a near zero, real-growth Vermont economy and all the ensuing negatives, such as stagnant real household incomes, young people graduating and not staying in Vermont, because decent jobs are scarce, and stagnant population of hardworking, ambitions, experienced workers.
Extending an expensive, subsidized, smargosbord of medical benefits to various people under Obamacare will become an unsustainable national economic burden that will drag down the Vermont economy and the US economy.
Those people in the legislature in Montpelier have no idea how to govern or even how to spend the states money. Too much waste and to many free programs and too many people leaching off the system. The answer to everything in Montpelier is raise the taxes, and they wonder why everyone is fleeing the state like the plague? Get smart you people you were all sent their to do a job responsibly and you have yet to prove that to the vast majority of the population? Do the right things for a change and stop the waste and the new taxes?