by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Oct 23, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
Last week, the Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) released an updated state revenue forecast showing that Arizona may be facing a $400 million budget shortfall next year. And as predictable as the sun rising in the East, Democrat politicians and their friends in the media went on the attack, blaming the deficit on two historic reforms despised by the left—universal school choice expansion and the 2.5% flat tax cut passed in 2021.
For the Democrats and their sycophant media allies, the problem is always too much parental choice in education and letting taxpayers keep more of their hard-earned money. Yet this narrative couldn’t be further from the truth. A closer look at Arizona’s budget and the projected budget deficit reveals that we have a spending problem, not a revenue problem…
Projected Budget Shortfall Is a Spending Problem
Just 5 years ago, the legislature enacted the FY 2019 budget that included $10.1 billion in on-going spending, plus $500M in “one-time” expenditures ($10.7 billion total). By last year, that number had exploded to nearly $15 Billion in ongoing spending, a 50% growth in ongoing spending in 5 years! The most recent budget negotiated with Democrat Katie Hobbs earlier this year kept ongoing spending at a lower trajectory but included “one-time” outlays that brought the total budget cost to $17.8B…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Oct 18, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Unless you are New Mexico Governor Lujan Grisham, who thinks she can just declare a public health emergency and ignore what the Constitution says. Yes, in her view, she can declare an emergency and then all “rights” are on the table, and she is free to suspend them as she wishes.
Thankfully, this was too far for even anti-gun politicians like Rep. Ted Lieu from California and New Mexico’s own Attorney General who said he would not defend the declaration in court. In other words, it was so clearly unconstitutional that even the most radical gun control advocates distanced themselves from it.
Abuses of Emergency Powers During COVID
But it is an important reminder of the abuse of emergency powers we all experienced during COVID, and why it is critical to rein in these powers. While it’s clearly unconstitutional to suspend the 2nd amendment with an emergency declaration, most states over the last 100 years have granted extremely broad powers to the executive branch to declare so-called public health “emergencies…”
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Oct 14, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
“Don’t California our Arizona.” It’s a saying we’ve had around here for quite some time, and for good reason. Not only is California known for having ridiculously high tax rates, but woke policies in the state have:
- Banned the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.
- Banned all natural gas appliances (like the gas stove) by 2035.
- Led to an increase in smash-and-grab robberies after Prop 47 more than doubled the felony threshold for petty theft and shoplifting.
- Dramatically increased homelessness despite throwing billions of dollars at the problem.
- Led to rolling blackouts during historic heat.
The list could go on and on. But it’s pretty clear. California’s policies have been a disaster, so much so that the state once ran out of U-Hauls because so many people were leaving. And yet, despite all this, Arizona lawmakers still decided to send your hard-earned dollars to woke Hollywood liberals through a movie tax credit bill last year. And while we hate to say we told you so, that decision now appears to be coming back to haunt Arizonans…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Oct 7, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
It’s time for COVID mandates to go away forever. And last month, one Arizona town took a step in this direction when it passed a resolution that needs to be a trend in every city throughout our state.
With a desire to take proactive measures to protect citizens’ constitutional rights, the Queen Creek Town Council passed Resolution No. 1540-23 with a unanimous vote during its regular meeting in September. And it’s quite clear. While the town recommends that people exercise personal responsibility to prevent illness, it committed to not implementing mandates concerning masks, vaccines, business closures, curfews, or “any similar measure.”
But this great ordinance didn’t stop there…
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by AZ Free Enterprise Club | Sep 30, 2023 | Opinion
By the Arizona Free Enterprise Club |
For months we have been hearing that a small group of disgruntled political consultants and power-hungry politicians would be releasing their plan to scrap our century-old primary and general election system in favor of a confusing jungle primary/ranked choice voting scheme that will disenfranchise voters and empower special interests.
Well last week a group called “Save Democracy Arizona” rolled out their proposed election reform ballot initiative, and it is about as dysfunctional a plan as what we expected.
Reading through their proposed constitutional amendment, a sprawling 4 pages of poorly written language drafted in secret, it is abundantly clear that this won’t make elections any more transparent or fair except for the special interests who support it. And it does far more to disenfranchise voters and destroy democracy than actually save it…
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