Interview: New Calif. Assembly speaker wants tax code review "To do what,raise taxes a bunch.
"More Tax/Spends Democrats sink California further into the Red ,They should let the latino's have Kalifornia back and after a few years Los Angeles and the bay area will be back
to a sleepy little Mexican border villages !""
Incoming state Assembly Speaker Karen Bass on Tuesday said one way to solve California's continual budget mess is to revamp the state's tax code, possibly raising income taxes on the wealthy, levying sales taxes on services and closing tax loopholes.
The Los Angeles Democrat said she wants a bipartisan panel to examine the code and recommend ways to change it.
"The state of California is in a crisis," Bass said. "I want to set up a commission outside of the Legislature that will look at more long-term solutions and evaluate whether the tax structure we have now makes sense given that it was devised in the 1930s when we had an entirely different economy."
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has estimated that California's budget gap could approach $20 billion through June 2009. Bass, who takes over next week from current Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, said she expects the figure to be between $12 billion to $15 billion.
The shortfall has created friction between lawmakers who want spending cuts and those who want a combination of cuts and tax increases.
Bass said the panel she hopes to establish would evaluate whether lawmakers should raise some taxes and identify the tax loopholes that help the economy in the long run. It would not address the deficit for the fiscal year starting in July, she said.
http://www.bakersfield.com/119/story/437280.
