Dedicated Funds

The idea of creating a fee/tax for a dedicated use sounds like a great idea. Unfortunately it rarely ever is. Two examples I want to use as a warning to those that may fall into this trap. In Minnesota it is the MNCare tax and the one in Wisconsin I want to use is the 911 fee. Both were set up for a great public good. The first is to subsidize health care for the poor and the latter was to improve 911 emergency call centers. The first taxes doctors dentist and health care providers and the latter is a flat $.75 fee per land line. This is how they were sold to legislators and the public.

The truth is both funds in each state get raided to balance the overall budget. States and localities will continue to try to use this mechanism to raise taxes for "needed" programs. It is simply a way to keep spending money on lesser priorities and raise new taxes for higher priorities.

Either way the total taxes you pay keep going up and the level of trust in government keeps going down. The question is why does it keep working. Both sides of the aisle do it - this is a nonpartisan problem.