General Assembly and Vote Tracker Update for February 4, 2017

HJR2, the Joint Resolution rejecting the report of the Delaware Compensation Commission, passed the House on 1/19/17, 40-0-1 (with only Melanie George Smith being absent) and then passed the Senate last week 18-0-2 (with Cathy Cloutier and Harris McDowell being absent).  Governor Carney signed it on Feburary 2.

Otherwise, it was a quiet week in the General Assembly as both houses are in recess until March 14 so that the Joint Finance Committee begins its budget hearing schedule for each state agency. The 12 Representatives and Senators on the Committee will spend the next several weeks reviewing each agency’s budget requests in crafting the fiscal 2018 budget while Governor Carney continues his budget reset tour of the state.

All of these budget reset meetings and Joint Finance Committee meetings are mere theater if they are not considering reforming or state income tax structure. Right now our state has a regressive flat tax structure that has those making $60,000 a year and those making $600,000 a year paying the same tax rate.  That is insane, and if you want to begin to tackle our budget problem, we should start with making all our citizens pay their fair share, rather than cutting more services and programs that people need.

Here is our current tax structure:
$0 – $2,000 0.00%
$2,000 – $5,000 2.20%
$5,000 – $10,000 3.90%
$10,000 – $20,000 4.80%
$20,000 – $25,000 5.20%
$25,000 – $60,000 5.55%
$60,000+ 6.60%

We should change it to something like this.  You will notice that the vast majority of Delawareans making under $200,000 get a significant tax cut under this proposal.

$0 – $10,000 0.00%
$10,000 – $20,000 2%
$20,000 – $30,000 3%
$30,000 – $40,000 4%
$40,000 – $60,000 5%
$60,000 – $100,000 5.5%
$100,000 – $200,000 6%
$200,000 – $300,000 7%
$300,000 – $400,000 8%
$400,000 – $500,000 9%
$500,000 + 10%