Mitch Daniels delivered his State of the State Address last night. It was widly speculated as to the plan he would lay our for Hoosiers; it was a well guarded secret.

Today we know that part of his plan includes a one percent income tax on Hoosiers earning more than $100,000 per year. Daniels led into his proposal for this new tax with, “This is the time to set aside self-interest in the cause of restoring responsibility to our management of the people’s finances.”

I have no problem with our need to restore “responsibility to our management of the people’s finances” but what I really don’t like is that the people who are responsible for causing our fiscal mess are still largely in office. True, O’Bannon and Kernan are no longer in power, but all of the state senators and representatives that voted for and supported their spending plans are largely still in office!

“They were doing the will of the people!” you might cry, “It’s not their fault!”

That’s just bunk. “The People” collectively want to watch American Idol and The Simple Life and don’t really even want to understand what is being done by their local legislature. They show up on election day, pull the straight-party-ticket, and consider their civic duty well done.

There is a very small, and active minority that is highly involved in state politics and getting their agenda passed for “the good of the public”. They work closly with our elected officials, some articles are written in the local papers and then laws get passed without the public, by and large, caring.

The public doesn’t seem to care when we’re spending and spending and have spent our way into a billion dollar deficit. Local radio hosts get on their soapbox about the deficit and a few listeners will call in and say, “Gee, we should do something about our debt.”

When the issue of switching to daylight savings time comes up it generates a veritable firestorm of controversy. Radio show hosts spend not minutes on the topic, but hours and even days debating the merits of daylight savings time. Callers light up the board; outraged that we haven’t switched and outraged that we’re even proposing such a change!

In the grand scheme of things moving Indiana to daylight savings time would likely be a smart move economically, but it’s not nearly as important a topic as controlling spending or raising taxes. The public doesn’t seem to get excited by talk about controlling spending or raising taxes nearly enough and that’s sad and wrong.

So it’s likely that taxes will go up, at lease for a year, for some Hooisers. Daniels goes on to say, “So tonight I propose one more step that I would rather not propose. I ask the most fortunate among us, those citizens earning over $100,000 per year, for one year, to pay an additional one percent on the income they receive.”

Now most people are green with envy of someone earning over $100,000 per year. Some people are downright upset that someone else could earn $100,000 when they aren’t - they feel like they’re just as entitled to money, but the dirty little secret is that people who earn over $100,000 per year, by and large, are not fortunate to earn that much money…they’re earning it!

If I work harder than my co-workers or I work on bettering myself or learning skills that are highly in demand, or I take risks and invest money into business deals that other people don’t see the value in, I’ve earned the money that results from my efforts.

I’m not luckier than the guy working at McDonald’s, I’m just working harder and smarter! So why should only I get penalized by a tax hike?

If you break it down, 1% of $100,000 is one thousand dollars. If you earn exactly $100,000 you’re going to be coughing up an extra $83.33 per month, and it’s going to go straight to the state government. It won’t provide any new services, it’s just to pay down our debt.

How is this fair? Isn’t a person who earns $30,000 a year just as responsible for a share of the debt? I would argue that the only people who aren’t responsible for a portion of the debt are new Hoosiers who’ve just moved into the state. So why isn’t everyone going to have to pay their fair share?

My guess is that people who make $100,000 a year already know the secret to making money, and can work a little harder and make a little more. They will grumble, but in the end they’ll be okay. The gagged minority. A large percentage of Hoosiers don’t earn $100,000 a year and it will be easy for them to “stick it to the rich.” It’s an easy way to get taxes passed, but just like federal income taxes, once the door was opened on taking money from We, The People it has remained open.

Daniels states, “Let me stress that this surtax must be temporary, and one-time only. I will veto any attempt to raise general taxes on our citizens, and any attempt to extend for even one day the one temporary measure I reluctantly propose tonight.” and I hope that if this “temporary tax” is passed will be true. But people forget that on February 3, 1913 the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified and income taxes in the United States became a permanent part of American life.

Federal income taxes started out as a temporary tax too and now look where we are.

Mitch, I implore you to stop your plans for a tax - even if you call it temporary - and look long and hard at cutting programs that are burning up our current tax revenues.

If you cannot find any other way to rectify the budget, at least tax fairly across the board. Don’t play the class card like you’re doing now, eventually you’ll run out of “rich” people to take money from - they’re not ATMs with cash at the ready.

If you can’t get an income tax passed when it touches everyone - from those making ten thousand to those making ten million - maybe it’s not the right way to generate the needed monies.

And to the public; quit electing politicians who let us get into and stay into huge budget deficits like we’re in! If you don’t want your taxes raised, maybe you should look deep within and see if you can stand for some program cuts. Afterall, most of the programs that cost us all this money were demanded by us in the first place. The goverment just listened, took our hard earned money and put those programs in place.