MINEOLA, New York (Reuters) – At his January 2010 inauguration, Tea Party-backed Republican Edward Mangano marched up to the podium, pen in hand. Even before being officially declared Nassau County Executive, he signed a repeal of an unpopular home energy tax. The move elicited chants of "Eddie, Eddie, Eddie" from supporters assembled in the auditorium of Mangano's alma mater, Bethpage High School, 30 miles east of New York City. "This is very cool and quite an honor," Mangano said as he gave his admirers a thumbs-up. The fiscal consequences, however, were anything but cool. The repeal set Mangano on an immediate collision course with the state-appointed fiscal overseer, the Nassau County Interim Financial Authority, or NIFA. It culminated in NIFA seizing control of the wealthy New York county's finances on Wednesday. Nassau's ills exemplify the growing tension across the country as dozens of freshly-elected Tea Party lawmakers, many of whom promised to cut taxes, must find ways to slash record budget gaps as revenues dwindle. "A lot of people who got elected on this type of anti-tax platform are running into the brick wall of fiscal reality," said Matthew Gardner, executive director of the non-partisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy in Washington. Besides being a cautionary tale, the setback in Nassau County is a black eye for the Tea Party, the grassroots movement built around the core principles of constitutionally limited government, free-market ideology and low taxes. Indeed, a close examination reveals that the affluent area's woes were exacerbated by missteps and miscalculations. Among other things, a Reuters review of dozens of public and private documents showed vague, circular answers to oversight panel queries and basic math errors in budget documents. In a sense, Nassau County's predicament remains highly unusual. The oversight board created by New York State more than a decade earlier following a financial crisis gave Mangano little margin for error. But in other ways, Nassau County is not unlike many places in the United States today. A June 2010 survey by the National Association of Counties found 65 percent of the 800 counties polled reported budget shortfalls of between $100,000 and $50 million. "It's a metaphor for what is happening in the Western world," said Richard Ravitch, who advised New York City during its fiscal crisis in the 1970s. "People don't want to tax but there is a point below which they don't want to cut." "NO PROPERTY TAX BUDGET" In September, Mangano presented his 2011 budget, which he called a "no property tax budget." He said it would eliminate 400 county jobs and cut more than $100 million in spending. Both Comptroller George Maragos as well as the county legislature's Republican majority leader Peter Schmitt deemed the budget was sound. But by NIFA's calculation, it was off by at least $26 million -- the one percent that would spur a control period. "A budget is a plan, it's a dynamic plan," the comptroller told Reuters in an interview in his Mineola office. "For NIFA to argue that a one-percent anticipated deficit in a $2.6 billion budget is cause for alarm I think is ludicrous." But NIFA were not the only one concerned with the 2011 budget. In November, Moody's Investors Service downgraded the county and put its finances on outlook negative, citing weak liquidity and an over-reliance on nonrecurring revenues. The rating agency singled out the energy tax repeal as problematic. For the next two months, there was constant wrangling between the two sides -- with NIFA saying the county had cut taxes without making up the difference and Mangano and Maragos accusing the authority of playing politics. "I thought they were very antagonistic, very assertive ... as if they're in control, they're running the county," the comptroller said. Indeed, NIFA sent multiple requests to county officials beginning as early as the summer, asking for back-up for their cost savings as well as a battery of additional contingency plans. When they had questions for the comptroller that August, he was out of the country. Maragos spent nearly six weeks in his native Greece, although he had remote access to email and spoke with his office daily. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110127/pl_nm/us_taxes_nassau_teaparty Long article but a good read. Basically the tea party is finding out the have my cake and eat it too philosophy of governing doesn't work. You cut a $7 a month tax and argue you will make up for it by cutting spending. Until you realize that spending is police officers, teachers, etc.
If the Tea Party was fiscally responsible like they claim, they'd realize even tax cuts must be paid for.
How convenient, the OP failed to even mention Mangano's predecessor Thomas Suozzi (Democrat) who was probed and then blasted by NIFA for his utter incompetence. It's on his wiki page for crying out loud. Oh, and here's that Long Island Press piece for those who truly love fact-finding and research prior to posting inflammatory threads on the BBS. Spoiler So, let me put this in perspective: 1) Thomas Suozzi (Democrat) utterly fails at his job by creating false projections using federal stimulus money and proceeds from the sales of municipal bonds to hide huge budget gaps. 2) NIFA investigates and publicly roasts him for what sounds like complete budget fraud. 3) Suozzi loses reelection to Tea Party backed Republican Edward Mangano. 4) Mangano tries to fix the mess by cutting taxes starting with repeal of a very unpopular home energy tax. 5) NIFA decide to drop the hammer and takeover. 6) Phillyrocket find a poorly-researched article on the interwebs, hoping to use it as ammo to denigrate the Tea Party and earn some much needer internet rep points. 7) A few googles later, facts come out. Captain wiki to the rescue again. 8) /thread See folks, this is what happens when you have to decipher through the mountain of clutter posted in the D&D by trigger-happy libs. Some random Tea Party guy is attacked for trying to cleanup the huge pile of mess left behind by his fraudulent Democrat predecessor. Your typical D&D thread in a nutshell.
ghettocheeze: I'm not exactly sure how that excuses Mangano from being so dumb that he thought fixing a budget gap could be accomplished via a tax cut. Similarly, pointing out that these massive budget gaps were caused (in part) by the stupidity and short-sightedness of previous government officers is not particularly shocking.
duh. when a democrat does something stupid, it absolves any republican from blame when they do something stupid.
Exactly. Clearly things were a mess when Mangano stepped into office, but to quote from the article "basic math errors" did not help, but in fact, made the situation even worse. His rhetoric hit the wall of reality, so nothing you posted changes that. ghettocheese, if your logic skills are tea party forged, it kind of all fits. The thread is not about democrats (who are also often stupid). It's about a guy campaigning on populist rhetoric that is as far removed from painful reality as possible. He might as well have promised golden jumpsuits and rayguns for everyone. (I could see Bachman promising that in the primaries, actually.)
As others have pointed out, you missed the point entirely: this isn't about the problems facing the office when he was elected. It's about the Tea Baggers being a lot of empty talking-points and slogans with no real-world solutions. It's easy to stand up and scream, "I pay too much in taxes!" It's not so easy to be the person allocating that money to make sure all initiatives are funded and the citizenry are taken care of. As we've long suspected, we're starting to see that the Tea Baggers are not a legitimate political force, but rather a lot of people complaining about things they have no clue how to fix. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing... Honestly, the whole idea of the "tea" thing is just ridiculous. "Taxed Enough Already". Point me to a time in history when people didn't feel they were paying too much in taxes. Their entire identity is based on inflammatory hyperbole and contentiousness.
See there you go again. I am not here to defend Mangano, I hardly know anything about the guy. What I do know is that his predecessor was a complete fraud who left a huge pile of mess for him to fix. Sounds familiar doesn't it? If you can cut Obama some slack over the last 2 years, then you can definitely give the benefit of the doubt to a guy who has been in office for only a few weeks. Also, Mangano's home energy tax repeal was never suppose to fix budget gaps, that was the assumption of the Yahoo writer. That tax was very unpopular and was created by his predecessor Suozzi who used it to cover his fraudulent budget projections. Every Nassau County resident was paying an extra $7 on their monthly bill because Suozzi was stupid enough to spend the county's emergency fund in good times before the recession. This is the meat of story, a politician creates a pile of mess and starts taxing his constituency to make up for it. His successor comes in and has to deal with public outrage over these stupid taxes left behind. Then, to top it all off, the oversight committee steps in and takes over after the first tax repeal. To me, that sounds like he was setup for failure by his predecessor Suozzi and NIFA. But who am I to say that? For, every day I have to put up with people who continue to defend a current politician and blame his predecessor even after two years in office. Sounds like some here don't practice what they preach.
Shouldn't that work both ways? You've cut Obama zero slack over the last 2 years, yet here you are quickly jumping in to say that this guy who can't even add up a budget correctly is the victim of circumstances created by his predecessor.
Obama was given his fair chance. That is why he was able to run up the deficit $3 trillion over 2 years. So, don't give me that nonsense. Go back and look at my posts circa 2008, I went so far as to say Bush was one of the most incompetent fiscally irresponsible president ever. Obama was given a bad situation but he has done more to make it worse. Plus, Obama waited 2 full years before he addressed the tax situation with that quasi-bipartisan effort he calls a "good" deal for America. The situation with this Mangano guy is very different. He has only been in office a few weeks and has already been preempted by the oversight comittee for the huge budget gaps created by his incompetent predecessor. If you can't see through that, then I have no reason to even debate with you.
Your logic fail in this post is epic up top, but I have no desire to bother with that one, I'll take the low hanging fruit: Welcome to 2011 my friend! We don't have flying cars yet. If you can't see that it is now 2011 and not 2010, then I have no reason to even debate with you!
If you say it enough times, maybe it will be true that Magano just got elected. Stop twisting facts, you make the tea party math look worse with tea party history.
Again? Really? Yes. Welcome to America since 1984. I have cut him slack when it was logical to do so, e.g. with the unemployment rate. I have reamed him repeatedly for a host of things: wiretapping, torture, guantanamo, DADT, and many more. As it pertains to this thread, it is especially interesting to note that I complained and am still complaining about Obama's tax "compromise" with...well...republicans...who, like Mangano made a lot of good speeches about tackling budget problems and then proceeded to widen deficits. Frankly on this board, I am more often than not critical of Obama. So...really...find a new card to play. Irrelevant. The damage was done and Mangano is now stupidly making it worse. Yes, because reality has to trump ideology when the **** really hits the fan. At the risk of sounding like Major (god forbid that becomes common), this is what Obama is really good at, neglecting ideological demands for the sake of solutions. I think he goes too far and bends to easily in many cases, but sometimes you just gotta bail out some water instead of b****ing about the size and color of the pail while the boat keeps sinking. And for christ's sake, you cannot campaign about washington's financial mess and your plans to clean up house, and then not look like an idiot when the first thing you do is make it worse. If you're going to campaign on cutting taxes and fixing huge budget shortfalls - well, you're stupid and you're kinda screwed. Sheesh. Please...
It sounds to me like you believe taxes are the only way to solve a budget gap. So you made your point that the tea party doesn't know how to balance a budget bc they don't like taxes (?), so how do you propose a budget gets balanced? Is your answer going to be " taxes bc taxes take care of our citizenry and taxes help keep the sidewalk cleaned, and pay for our childrens schooling, and pay for our citys social program and blah blah blah"
Enlighten me, why do tax cuts have to be paid for? How is it that a tax cut in And of itself cannot be construed as a shrewd fiscal decision. Are we utterly dependent on taxes and government that we cant organize ourselves fiscally without having the powder of taxes and demonizing tax cuts?
It goes something like this. When you cut revenue and don't cut spending, you get what's called a budget deficit. Every year that deficit rolls up and is added to the previous year's deficit and so and so on, they call that the debt. The current national debt is 14 trillion dollars. Okay, now say again?
