Recession is Georgia lawmakers’ Trojan Horse for special interest tax breaks
Compare the proposed Georgia statehouse Republican “economic recovery plan” to Barack Obama’s stimulus package and you get an idea how disinterested GOP politicians are over the needs of average families.
The only part of their proposal remotely designed to help create jobs is described by the AJC as “a $2,400 income tax credit for each unemployed person that businesses hire before July 2010 and keep on the job for at least 24 months.”
Now, I’m trying to imagine the business owner who would make a decision to hire an unemployed person (and to exclude from consideration any employed candidates) so that two years down the road, if that unemployed person stayed in that job, the business would get a $2,400 tax credit.
“It wouldn’t change how many jobs were created, it would only change who gets the jobs,” one economist was quoted as saying.“You are giving taxpayer money to things that would have happened anyway.” And the recession will be over by the time the businesses will get the credits anyway..
The unemployed-hire’s tax credit is actually just cover for the bill’s more substantive measure: A $1 billion giveaway to businesses, starting in 2012, with the phaseout of the state corporate income tax.
That’s unlikely to do anything to ease the recession (which hopefully will be long past by then), but it will make it much more difficult for future lawmakers to balance the budget without cutting big-ticket items like schools, health care and transportation.
Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers, R-Canton, and House Majority Jerry Keen, R-St. Simons Island, are all gungho about it, so it seems likely to pass. Ah, well. That’s the way the sausage gets made in Georgia — sort of like the peanut butter.
Our new website!
