Thanks A Lot, Rick Perry!

By John Basel

I just got a tax increase notice from the Texas Workforce Commission.  As an employer I will have to pay nearly $800 more in unemployment insurance taxes next year.  This could have been avoided if we didn’t have a governor who wasn’t more interested in political grandstanding than the interests of Texans. 

As part of the federal stimulus program initiated earlier this year Texas could have taken $556 million dollars in federal money to ease the burden on the state’s unemployment fund due to the increase in unemployment claims brought on by the recession.

But our governor, Rick Perry, in a highly televised event, turned the free money down.  Why?  Political motivations aside, he said it had strings attached. Strings that would have required increasing the number of people eligible for unemployment benefits.  Then, he said, when the money ran out business owners would have to continue to foot the bill for the increased numbers of beneficiaries. 

That seemed logical to some at the time but what would have been so hard about ending the program when the money ran out?  Perry and his partisan hacks didn’t want to consider that because it would make the federal program seem like a good idea.  An idea that would have benefited 45,000 Texans who needed the financial help until they could get another job and it might have avoided this tax increase to all Texas businesses.

So now, Texas business owners are all facing another Rick Perry tax hike.  Yes, another one.  Perry also increased taxes on businesses when he replaced the Franchise tax with the Margin tax, the first corporate income tax in the history of Texas.  Yes, the Margin Tax IS an income tax on corporations.

Please, fellow Texans, kick this guy out of office come the next election!  I can’t afford him!