Another opinion.

LOS ANGELES (AP) – Hundreds of protesters chanted, marched and took over a building Thursday on the UCLA campus, where University of California regents were scheduled to vote on a 32 percent student fee increase.
The UC Board of Regents is considering boosting undergraduate fees—the equivalent of tuition—by $2,500 by summer 2010
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Over 10% unemployment and rising, higher than that in many places, and the PhDs at the university have ONE solution to their problem: RAISE TUITION. 32% !!!!!

Food courts, massage, saunas, luxury dorm options, shen fui, yoga, student life recreation monuments, no expense spared, coffee shops, soaring atriums, $10,000- $50,000, $100,000 guest speakers, campus bus systems for mass transit instead of private vehicles, green promotional programs … an ivory tower unto itself, where everyone is 18-29, a sort of open air mall Logan’s Run world.
Nope, everything is essential!

look, the answer is simple and frankly inevitable, barring some massive second stimulus, they are going to have to cut parts of the budget and raise taxes. what gets cut and where the taxes get raised are going to have to be debated. this continued dickering around is going to in the end mean actually higher taxes than if they would have figured this out last January.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0301.green.html

You are just straight wrong….

One year after his massive tax cut, Reagan agreed to a tax increase to reduce the deficit that restored fully one-third of the previous year’s reduction. (In a bizarre bit of self-deception, Reagan persuaded himself that $100 billion tax hike–the largest since World War II–was actually “tax reform” that closed loopholes in his earlier cut and therefore didn’t count as raising taxes.)

Faced with looming deficits, Reagan raised taxes again in 1983 with a gasoline tax and once more in 1984, this time by $50 billion over three years, mainly through closing tax loopholes for business.

So really no tax hikes?

Please get your facts straight on Reagan. The ONLY tax increase he agreed to was the closing of loopholes in the 1986 Tax reform act which didn’t take effect until 1987. The great recovery in 1983-1984 was entirely due to the tax cuts AND the lowering of interest rates from a peak of 21%.
Tax cuts will not fix our current fiscal crisis because the money has already been spent. We have no choice but to make drastic cuts, but tax cuts will make our recovery stronger. Arizona is 4th highest in the nation in commercial property taxes. That would be a great place to start.
As for Mesa, perhaps if the city office actually tried to HELP businesses succeed instead of doing everything in their power to block new businesses from starting up it might encourage a few new businesses to move there!
Mayor Smith is trying to make changes, but internal bureaucracies are difficult to change.

The idea of go buy a bigscreen tv and save the economy was tried before, that is exactly what some republicans called bushes tax cuts. It didn’t do anything! In fact it made things worse!

My solution is simple you need to temporarily increase taxes now. Just how reagan did in 83 and 84. We have the highest unemployment since guess when… 1983… It worked then after tax cuts failed I would be willing to bet it works now.

Now the increases would only be temporary. And you can attack me for being too left with this idea but its just what reagan did so I guess I am just as far left as him which I am more than ok with

Your examples are not wrong, just not applicable because tax rates cannot be cut to the extent your examples were, they aren’t high enough. The Reagan example is actually a perfect example of how big tax cuts are not the answer. Reagan cut taxes and soon-after was forced to raise taxes a high higher clip then almost any other president when compared to GDP and inflation.

My thoughts? Temporary tax now (3-4 years) ending in off year so it is harder to renew and expiring by law. Dedicate it to education or other basic services. Follow it up with a tax cut/reform such as was proposed last year. Make it beneficial for companies to relocate/focus it on business taxes.

Texas has something CA and AZ doesn’t. A breaking mechanism that prevents the state budget from growing faster than underlying economic growth.

To Create Jobs, Cut Taxes and Spending
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2009/11/024987.php

Businesses are cutting back. On what logical basis does government insist on status quo, even raising taxes of any sort, when people are losing work and their homes?

Many universities and colleges are also in la-la land, many with tuition increases planned for the coming year despite double-digit unemployment now. They seem to expect that more government loans will enable students to continue to pay higher tuition, but the rational public response to a weak job market, job losses and financial uncertainty is to go to cheaper colleges, or forgo colleges because the average public will not take on more debt if they believe they will be unable to repay it. And the availability of government student loans is based on taxes, and with double-digit unemployment, tax revenues are falling, as unemployment payments demands are rising. Unlike the private sector which promotes a growing economic pie with new industry, business and job creation, the government budget pie is fixed, limited by the total tax intake. If the private sector stops growing or shrinks, the tax intake follows. In the case of colleges, more money to student loans means less money for the unemployed, who need to eat and pay their bills this week, this month. Which one takes priority?
Obama is promising more economic depression. This is the beginning of worse.

Regan is my hero but I admit that his tax cuts don’t necessarily count since he soonafter had to raise taxes dramatically.