As Mayor, ‘Hard-Core Fiscal Conservative’ Sarah Palin Left Wasilla $20 Million In Debt
source: http://thinkprogress.org/wonkroom/2008/09/03/wasilla-in-debt/
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- osiris326
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Palin embraces the title, labeling herself a “hard-core fiscal conservative,” whose “agenda was to stop wasteful spending.
However, as mayor of Wasilla, AK, Palin “was not always the fiscal watchdog she has since boasted of being.”
During her term in office, Palin cut property taxes and other small taxes on business. But as the Anchorage Daily News points out, “She wasn’t doing this by shrinking government.” During her tenure, the budget of Wasilla (population 5,469 in 2000) “apart from capital projects and debt, rose from $3.9 million in fiscal 1996 to $5.8 million.”
Palin also successfully pushed through a sales tax increase in Wasilla, which went to fund a $15 million sports complex. However, a land dispute over the sight of the complex led to “years of legal wrangling” and cost Wasilla almost $1.7 million, “a lot more than the roughly $125,000 the city would have paid in 1998 if it had closed a deal to buy the property outright.” Wasilla is still facing budget shortfalls from the case today.
When Palin left office in 2002, Wasilla had “racked up nearly $20 million in long-term debt,” or roughly $3,000 of debt per resident.
But Palin’s approach actually brings her in line with McCain, whose own “massive tax cuts” “would recklessly exacerbate the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Administration” and cause the largest deficit in 25 years.
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BarneyDDog
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She is the One True Fiscal Conservative: if we project the debt she left behind as an "accountable small town major" to the US it makes 1.35 TRILLION dollars. A glimpse of what is to come in addition to the current Iraq 4 trillion (according to Economics Nobel Prize 2001 Stiglitz), Wall Street 120 + 700 billion bailout (according to our Treasure Sec, Mr. Hank "Bazooka" Paulsen) not to mention the 9.7 TRILLION National Debt (32.000 per inhabitant, 90,000 per actual taxpayer) + 500 billion 2008 budget deficit as a "White House warming present" left by G.W. Bush.
Get your calculators and a life boat... - 3 years ago
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BarneyDDog
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Inofuilwell
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Another Bush! Bush inherited a $2 Billion SURPLUS from Democratic Governor Ann Richards and left Texas at the end of 1.5 terms as Governor with a $4 Billion DEFICIT!
He then went on to do the same thing in Washington. "Conservatives" are the most fiscally LIBERAL politicians on the planet and McCain re-made himself in the Rovian/Bush/Cheney image.
They also want to blame Dems who have controlled Congress only since 2006 while 8 years of Republican majorities in Congress and a fiscal liberal (Bush) in the White House is what wrecked the U.S. Economy.
Now we want McCain and a fiscal liberal as his V.P. to continue the destruction of America's once great economy?
I think not.
- 3 years ago
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Inofuilwell
