Despite claims to the contrary on the Left, Nevada’s government is presently operating on a biennial general fund budget of about $6.4 billion. Gov. Sandoval has proposed a budget for the 2011-12 biennium of $5.8 billion. Now follow the math with me here.
$6.4 billion minus $5.8 billion. You can’t take eight from four because four is less than eight, so you have to borrow one from the six and add it to the four. That gives you fourteen, minus eight, is 6….or $600 million. Which means the governor’s budget needs to plug a $600 million over-spending deficit for the next two-year budget cycle.
Not $2.7 billion. $600 million.
I raise this basic mathematical equation because Hugh Anderson, chairman of the Government Affairs Committee for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, sent out a letter to Chamber members on Friday which says that “raising taxes at this time is a difficult option to face,” however, because of the “current $2.7 billion budget gap,” the Chamber believes “additional tax revenue may be necessary.”
So the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, which has been involved in secret negotiations with Democrat leaders for over a year now, is using a falsely-inflated over-spending deficit figure to basically say that Gov. Sandoval and the vast majority of Nevada’s voters are….wrong.
According to the Chamber, taking a page right out of Democrat Majority Leader Steven Horsford and PLAN’s playbook, our state government is too small and Nevadans aren’t taxed enough already. And in order to continue growing the government, even in the middle of the worst economic crisis in Nevada’s history – including the nation’s highest unemployment rate, highest foreclosure rate and highest bankruptcy rate – the state’s largest supposedly pro-business organization’s solution is to….raise taxes?
With “friends” like the Las Vegas Chamber, why do Nevada’s small businesses need enemies? If you’re a small business, especially if you’re a Las Vegas Chamber member, you might want to consider joining the Nevada Business Coalition instead. We don’t sell out our members to the government; we defend them from it.
