That's not really the same though. Did Clinton actually manage to fix the roads? If he did, that wasn't a mistake and voters were simply retaliating for a tax increase.
> Did Clinton actually manage to fix the roads? ... and voters were simply retaliating for a tax increase.
Not a great argument because many people view one of the primary responsibilities of local government is to maintain the roads (in USA). If they cannot properly budget and allocate money, regardless if the tax increase worked, it was the wrong way to fix the problem. With this mindset government can fix every problem by raising taxes.... Not acceptable to most people.
That argument doesn't necessarily make sense. You can't budget properly and allocate funds if you have no funds. Look at all the countries with a high level of social services. They collect a lot of tax.
If people really think that the government can maintain roads with no money, assuming they don't have that money, I don't know what to say.
> You can't budget properly and allocate funds if you have no funds. Look at all the countries with a high level of social services. They collect a lot of tax.
If their primary purpose is to take care of the roads, that should be one of the first items that gets funded with taxes they already collect, therein lies the problem people have. It's not like they have no money, it was improperly allocated to the point where they were in the negative to meet the needs required of them. We are not a country with a lot of social services, we have very few. It a case of the government not doing their jobs well and taking more money cover that fact up.
My point is that services don't come from thin air. There may have been things besides the roads that may need to get funded every year and not have enough surplus to cover the roads. You may even have priorities that are important enough that even if running them was a inefficient, you may need to fund them anyway while you try and improve efficiency. Introducing a tax so that you could finally fund a project is not at face value a bad idea.
I am not familiar with this particular instance. But the story about Clinton as it stands is not really relevant. Much like this sub-thread.
> If people really think that the government can maintain roads with no money
Do you really think they brought in "no" money? That's ridiculous. The government should figure out how to waste less of the existing taxes before demanding more.
If every time I did not budget properly would it be acceptable to ask my boss for more money? Every time? Or is it my fault for not budgeting properly. I'd probably be fired if I did this.
That seems like an unrelated question. I thought we were talking about Clinton's one-time budget to improve roads that included a tax increase to cover it. Clinton wasn't governor in the previous term, he wasn't the one that under-budgeted the roads originally.
> he wasn't the one that under-budgeted the roads originally.
Im not sure who caused the budget deficit in the first place, but he is the one that took more money from citizens to fix a problem that should have been fixed by reallocating existing funds.
