Tax Freedom Day

By Paul Hegyi

California's work 4 months a year just to pay taxes.

Up till today, you have been working to cover the bill run up by politicians in federal, state and local government. That's 4 full months just to pay your tax bill.

Probably of no surprise, Tax Freedom arrives later in California than most other states in our union. Although the federal government takes the vast majority of our taxes, California does a good enough job to saddle taxpayers with the fourth highest burden in the nation, trailing New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.

What's worse is the constant stream of proposals to increase our tax burden. Just this year we have seen proposals to increase the car tax by $6 billion, elimination of the home mortgage interest deduction costing taxpayers $5.3 billion and oil taxes worth $1.2 billion.

I reject these and the nearly dozen other proposals politicians are trying to pass onto you to fix the problem THEY got us into. In the last four years revenue in California has increased 40 percent. The problem is that spending has gone up 44 percent.

No matter what the liberals tell you, California doesn't face a revenue problem, we have spending addiction. Instead of debating ways to get more money out of hard working taxpayers we need to be dissecting government programs and focusing on only the most important priorities.

In the Assembly I will work day and night to offer concrete proposals to cut spending and redirect government to your priorities. We shouldn't be offering in-state tuition to our colleges for illegal immigrants, costing Californians $75 million a year. We need to tighten up welfare eligibility and require people get back to work, saving over $300 million a year.

Californians are already taxed too much. Increasing the burden will only hurt our economy and lengthen the time before we can bounce back. Please join me in working for a balanced budget by CUTTING spending.

-- Paul Hegyi