2012 December Budget & Tax News

The December issue of Budget & Tax News reports an interesting case of government failing to be transparent: The Scottsdale, Arizona city council has voted to spend nearly $2 million for a new police station but refuses to disclose where the building will be located.

Also in this issue:

• Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn has vetoed a bill that would have vastly expanded gambling in Illinois, bucking many legislators in his own political party and fellow Democrat Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago.

• The Federal Communications Commission has withdrawn a proposal to tax broadband Internet service after a public outcry over the issue.

• President Barack Obama’s budget plan would continue policies that have made the economic recovery since 2009 the weakest since the Great Depression, whereas those of Rep. Paul Ryan would return the federal government to its modern average level of spending and growth, according to a study by Heartland Institute Senior Fellow Peter Ferrara.

• Fewer than half the jobs Chicagoans have been promised by the hundreds of millions of dollars spent annually in the city’s tax increment finance districts have been created, a watchdog organization has found.

• For the fourth consecutive year, the World Economic Forum has lowered the United States in its annual ranking of the world’s most competitive economies.

• “Social Security’s future, at least in the form it has existed dating back to FDR, is now greatly imperiled. The last few years of legislative neglect – due to a failure of national policy leadership coming just as the Baby Boomers have begun to retire – have drastically harmed the program’s future financial prospects.”