Reminds Voters That Balancing The Budget Is A Constitutional Mandate
Press release, PARIS, TN - Today, Jim Poe, Conservative Republican
candidate for State House reacted to the “Legislative Update” sent out by his
opponent. District 75 voters received a
four-color, cardboard update filled with pictures of Poe’s opponent and
declarations of accomplishments for the past General Assembly.
Chief among those “accomplishments”
was touting the fact that he had been a part of producing a balanced budget.
Unfortunately for Poe’s opponent, the Tennessee Constitution mandates that the
General Assembly pass a balanced budget each year. This duty is not subject to alteration or
change by law.
“For my opponent to claim some moral
superiority for doing his Constitutional duty smacks of an attempt to deceive
District 75 voters.,” said Poe. “Claiming
credit for balancing the state budget is tantamount to claiming that you didn’t
run any stop signs on the way home from work and expecting to get a pat on the
back from your neighbors for doing so.”
Poe continued, “What we don’t hear
about the budget is that it increased from $32 Billion to $34.9 Billion. My math tells me that’s an increase in one
year of 8.5%. I doubt you’ll find many
people in District 75 who saw their own incomes rise that much in one year.”
During the past two years,
Tennesseans have overpaid their tax bills by over $1,000,000,000. Only $10% of that amount was scheduled to go
into the State’s Rainy Day Fund and there has been no movement to return any of
that overage to Tennessee taxpayers.
Poe concluded, “Rather than crow
about doing the very minimum for taxpayers, we ought to be working to find ways
to stop the rate of the growth of government.
Returning these overpayments and allowing local taxpayers to churn
hundreds of millions of dollars back into their local economies rather than
keeping the money in Nashville seems to be a better use of those dollars if
they are not going to be moved into our Rainy Day Fund.”
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