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Lawmakers adjourned the 2007 legislative session on Saturday, April 28. While we accomplished some good things for Iowans, the Democrats’ big government, big mandate, bad for jobs agenda dominated this year’s session.

As you no doubt have heard by now, Democrats control both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time since 1965. They used their new power to push an extreme, anti-jobs agenda, which included items such as repealing Iowa’s Right to Work law.

To Tell the Truth:

Tax Hikes Today and Tomorrow

By David Johnson

State Senator

As I write Friday morning from Des Moines, lawmakers are working around the clock to adjourn the 2007 session of the Iowa General Assembly.

Truth be told, we accomplished some good things for Iowans. But telling the truth sometimes stings. While my goals continue to include working on a bipartisan basis whenever possible, the new majority that Iowa voters put into power last November has brought us bloated budgets and pushed policies that open a new era of big government mired in mandates that will hurt the Iowa economy.

Get ready to feel the sting.

Democrats control both chambers of the Legislature and the governor’s office for the first time since 1965.  Before the session began, majority party leaders publicly promised Iowans that they would offer a “mainstream agenda.” One leader said his party members “won’t act like kids in the candy store.”

Let the record show that just days into the session the new agenda became clear. Democrats unveiled plans to launch initiatives, such as repealing Iowa’s Right to Work law, that are bad for job creation and economic growth. Repealing the law will discourage job creation and steal freedom of choice from Iowa’s working families.

The Senate narrowly voted to gut Right to Work --- all Republicans voted no --- and the bill is on life support in the House. The effort has already had a chilling effect on economic growth across the state as companies that were once considering locations in Iowa now look to other states.

The penchant for big spending proposals and increased taxes and fees also hurts economic growth, not to mention Iowa taxpayers.  The Legislature will approve a budget of nearly $6 billion for next fiscal year. The state is now on track to spend an additional $1 billion in just two years.  That’s pretty astounding when you consider that the state didn’t reach its first $1 billion in spending until 1976. 

Simply put, this level of spending is not sustainable.  Iowa’s economy will not be able to generate $1 billion in new tax revenue over the next two years, which means Iowans could face a very large tax increase to pay for all of this spending in the future.

The budget this year represents a 10 percent increase in spending over last year. In contrast, Republicans cut Iowans’ income taxes by 10 percent when we took over the majority in 1997.

Despite much talk at the Statehouse about increasing access to affordable health care, the majority party accomplished little on the issue this year.  Unfortunately, all that Iowans will get in the area of affordable health care is yet another commission to study the issue, a huge tobacco tax increase and more General Fund spending.

In early January, our Republican leader in the Senate promised the minority would not sit back and be silent. We kept that promise, especially on health care.

Republicans again offered many health-care proposals such as providing tax credits to small businesses for employee health coverage, establishing a revolving loan fund to help more Iowans establish Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates for Iowa health-care providers.  It’s unfortunate that most of our proposals fell on deaf ears. By keeping the pressure on, however, we were able to convince Senate Democrats in the final hours of debate to approve a small increase in Medicaid reimbursements. But House Democrats are dragging their feet.

Both the Legislature and the governor missed tremendous opportunities this year in terms of both health-care reform and property-tax relief.  These are two issues that Iowans care deeply about and, unfortunately, there will be no measurable progress in the near future.  …(link)

David Johnson of Ocheyedan represents Iowa Senate District 3 --- all of Clay, Dickinson, O'Brien and Osceola counties, and part of Sioux County.

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