A Taxing Dilemma for the States

When Lee Dreyfus ran for Governor of Wisconsin in 1978, he pledged that if elected he would return the state's growing budget surplus to the taxpayers. The maverick Republican won handily, and promptly signed into law a $976 million tax relief program. "When you recover stolen property," boasted Dreyfus, "it ought to be handed back." Today the surplus is gone. To keep Wisconsin from going into the red in the next fiscal year, the tax-cutting Governor says he must raise the state's gasoline tax by 53% and scrap programs ranging from new highway construction to Milwaukee's student bus service.

The Dreyfus dilemma...

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