Before the NDP provincial budget was released on Tuesday I was still hoping to be surprised. I was hoping that the NDP would, after having raised taxes by the highest amount in a quarter of a century last year, release a plan to eliminate the deficit in the short-term and begin reducing the debt in the longer-term.
I would have been surprised had the NDP actually done this, because they have shown no desire in the past to get their spending under control, but I still held out hope. It turns out that on budget day I was in fact surprised, just not in the way I was hoping.
On Tuesday the NDP shocked many people by raising the provincial sales tax (PST) by 1%. Under existing law this can only be done with a referendum so the NDP also surprised many by announcing they would be changing the law so that they wouldn’t have to bring the PST increase to Manitobans through a referendum.
The increase in the PST will be an additional $227 million in taxes on Manitobans and that is on top of the $184 million in new taxes on Manitobans last year. What is worse is that the deficit isn’t going down. In fact, even after all these tax increases it is projected to be more than half a billion next year.
So how is this happening? How can the NDP increase taxes on essentially everything and everyone in the province and still be running massive annual deficits. The answer is that the NDP have a spending addiction and they have no interest in getting it under control.
Once again this year they have increased government spending by over 3%. This after spending far more than budgeted in each of the past several years. The NDP like to spend your money and they don’t have any intention it seems of slowing down.
Premier Greg Selinger cited two excuses for his most recent tax increase (remember, it is only 2 years ago he promised that he wouldn’t raise taxes). The first excuse is that the new tax money would be going into roads and highways. Yet a closer look at the budget shows the spending on roads and highways is hardly expected to increase next year. The second excuse is that the money is needed to pay for flooding costs. That was the same excuse Mr. Selinger used last year even after the provincial Auditor showed that the vast majority of the last deficit was the result of NDP overspending on non-flood related expenses.
The fact is that the PST increase and the massive deficit are not due to mother nature. They are due to the nature of the NDP. Whose nature has always been to tax and spend. That I suppose shouldn’t surprise anyone.
