House budget proposes $382 million in new spending, $417 million in new taxes and fees

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A new briefing paper from the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy shows that the House’s 2020-2021 budget proposal spends $382.4 million more in state funds than Gov. Chris Sununu’s proposed budget and includes $417.7 million in new taxes and fees. 

The paper shows that the divergence in governing philosophies between the Republican governor and the Democratic House majority could hardly be more stark. 

Sununu’s budget would increase fiscal year 2021 general fund spending by 5.4 percent over fiscal year 2018. The House budget increases spending over the same time period by 14.8 percent.

The tax increases show an equally sharp philosophical divergence. 

Gov. Sununu’s proposed budget contains one expanded tax (extending the tobacco tax to cover electronic cigarettes) and a new fee (a charge on newly allowed sports betting). The House budget also expands the tobacco tax and includes the sports betting fee but also includes hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes to cover the budget’s spending increases.

The House budget includes a sales tax on marijuana transactions ($4 million), business tax increases ($94.1 million), a new capital gains tax ($150 million), and a new wage tax (payroll tax) to fund a compulsory paid family and medical leave program ($168.6 million). 

Without those new taxes, the House budget does not balance. In fact, it also doesn’t balance without the surplus built up over the last two years.

Both Gov. Sununu and the House spend the current state budget surplus. But the governor treats the surplus as one-time revenue attributable primarily to the immediate stimulatory effects of the federal Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. He therefore dedicates the money to one-time appropriations rather than recurring spending. 

By contrast, the House treats the money as ongoing revenue and uses it to increase baseline state appropriations. Spending it this way requires future tax increases to sustain the higher level of spending, something the governor sought to avoid. 

The House budget would turn state taxation and spending sharply upward and put it on a rising trajectory into the foreseeable future.  

(A previous post in this space failed to account for a relocation of lottery revenues in the governor’s budget. That failure inaccurately put the House spending figure $584 million above the governor’s.)

A copy of the full report in pdf form is here: Budget Visions 2020-21-4.

 

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  1. […] of the people of New Hampshire to call this relatively measly sum “relief.” The Socialist budget proposes $417 million in new taxes and fees. The so-called “property tax relief” is not even THREE PERCENT of the new taxes and […]

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