WARNING: Dems attempting another new tax hike

T-minus 5 Days until Government Shutdown
Fri Oct 26, 2007 at 07:43:48 AM EST

No, you didn't misread the headline. The Democrats in Lansing apparently aren't satisfied with a nearly $1.4 BILLION tax hike and are moving to raise taxes again and to bury them in the "cuts" portion of the 10/1/07 budget agreement.
You'll remember that the Dems agreed to make a few cuts before November 1st. Of course, they haven't. And now word comes that they'd very much like to avoid the cuts when at all possible. According to the Detroit News:
Sources familiar with closed-door negotiations reported advances Thursday, but no final deal on the outstanding sticking points, including privatizing foster care, slicing money from disease prevention programs and raising hunting and fishing license fees.
The governor's office, the Democratic state House and the Republican Senate must agree to an additional $430 million in cuts to balance the state's books and avoid another partial shutdown of government services.
This at the same time that the Governor rejects calls from Congressman Pete Hoekstra to reexamine hundreds of thousands of dollars of new state spending on a turtle fence.
More taxes so that we can buy fences for turtles. Oh, and to pay for special gifts to the city of Detroit. Items like:
$12 million for the Detroit Zoo, $10 million for the Detroit Institute of Arts and $1.9 million for the Detroit Historical Museum.
And on top of it all, we're now only 5 days away from a government shutdown. The second in a month.
Read on...
http://www.rightmichigan.com/story/2007/10/26/74348/483