The Imperial Dominion of the South's Legislature

[CLARENCE 2015!]

This is an adjusted version of the Florida law... I did not realize we had prior right-to-work laws and am not sure what the differences with that are

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Yeah, we'll need to compare it to existing statute. I'll try to do it tonight.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I checked it over & didn't really get the differences. We'd probably need an expert in contract law to comb through them.

[Yelnoc]

So uh...

Should we just leave the existing law as is?

[CLARENCE 2015!]

I withdraw my bill... I did not realize there was an existing law

[Associate Justice PiT]

     It's alright. This has happened to me too.

[Yelnoc]

Alright then.  Since it looks like the Regional Ratification Amendment will fail in the Northeast, the only bill left in the que is the Relief for Job Creation, drafted by PiT a while ago.  Before we get to that though, we need to look over our budget again.  One time expense items need to be deleted in preparation for the upcoming fiscal year, speaking of which, we might need to amend the budget to define the IDS fiscal year.  I'm sure there will be a lot of things that need amending, and lots of things that need tweaking.  We have a huge surplus and a larger projected surplus due to over taxation.  Lot's of stuff to do.

To get the ball rolling, here is the Budget and Tax Committee thread.  The 2011 budget should be on one of the last pages.

EDIT: Below is an excerpt from a post I made in my office a while ago concerning the budget.

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[Associate Justice PiT]

     Yeah, I'm going to have to update the budget for next year. Well, that shouldn't be too bad.

[Yelnoc]

Any opinions on ramping up education funding?

[CLARENCE 2015!]

Strongly disagree without specifications.... the amount of bureacuratic bloat in universities is ridiculous, heard  a statistic that for each faculty member there is now an adminitrator. At universities in Florida, schools pay someone 70K a year to be "LGBTQ director" and push political issues...

I am against block funding of any kind and would rather have higher education find ways to reduce funding

[Yelnoc]

Strongly disagree without specifications.... the amount of bureacuratic bloat in universities is ridiculous, heard  a statistic that for each faculty member there is now an adminitrator. At universities in Florida, schools pay someone 70K a year to be "LGBTQ director" and push political issues...

I am against block funding of any kind and would rather have higher education find ways to reduce funding

You have to remember that the IDS is a bit different from Florida alone.  First, we averaged Florida's bloat with the failure of every other state in the region (excepting perhaps North Carolina and Georgia).  Secondly, there was a misguided law passed by initiative before I got here, which holds education funding so low that I doubt every school in the region has enough money to supply all of its students with books.  Class sizes must be horrendous.

Perhaps we need a SoIA to analyze the situation, but speaking as a former SoIA, the situation is pretty damn bad.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     The education budget is basically just the sum of every IDS state's IRL education budget. I'm guessing they are able to supply their students with books.

[Yelnoc]

     The education budget is basically just the sum of every IDS state's IRL education budget. I'm guessing they are able to supply their students with books.

That's the baseline, I'm pretty sure an existing IDS law required us to pare it down substantially.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     The education budget is basically just the sum of every IDS state's IRL education budget. I'm guessing they are able to supply their students with books.

That's the baseline, I'm pretty sure an existing IDS law required us to pare it down substantially.

     We had a law that pared it down to zero in favor of a rather ill-conceived voucher program. That law has been repealed.

[Yelnoc]

     The education budget is basically just the sum of every IDS state's IRL education budget. I'm guessing they are able to supply their students with books.

That's the baseline, I'm pretty sure an existing IDS law required us to pare it down substantially.

     We had a law that pared it down to zero in favor of a rather ill-conceived voucher program. That law has been repealed.

That's right!  Slipped my mind.

So do you want to go back to the 2011 baseline or get updated 2012 numbers from the states?

[Associate Justice PiT]

     The education budget is basically just the sum of every IDS state's IRL education budget. I'm guessing they are able to supply their students with books.

That's the baseline, I'm pretty sure an existing IDS law required us to pare it down substantially.

     We had a law that pared it down to zero in favor of a rather ill-conceived voucher program. That law has been repealed.

That's right!  Slipped my mind.

So do you want to go back to the 2011 baseline or get updated 2012 numbers from the states?

     I say update them. It should be pretty simple to do so, since the sites we used to create the original baselines still exist.

[Mr. Taft Republican]

Okay, I got dis! This combines both state and local budgets for FY 2011, hope it helps.

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http://books.google.com/books?id=OcRCwccqRNcC&pg=PA209&lpg=PA209&dq=Puerto+Rico+education+spending&source=bl&ots=OHc3MHdmv8&sig=Q9wwCb9YHPztMJ19boZLZNixV_E&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Z4f0TrWuCJDAtgf0o9DQBg&ved=0CGIQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Puerto%20Rico%20education%20spending&f=false

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/compare_state_education_spend


Leading to at least a necessary 212 Billion Dollars, if to follow from the state spending. Taft do good?

[Yelnoc]

Taft do best!  Yay Taft!

I think we should keep all of our recommendations here and then pass it altogether in an omnibus 2012 Authorization Spending Act. 
-Education: $212 billion

So we still have a surplus of $105 billion.  I suggest getting rid of the tax on fuel.
-Transportation/Tax-Motor Fuel Sales/Transportation Commission Initiative, Chapter 3, Section 22: $0.08/liter ($17,284,230,161/year)

Looking at the budget, does anyone else see anything they want to cut, or are they good with a massive surplus?  Oh and PiT, since that is last years budget, don't we have a $217,107,630,161 surplus locked in, and what we are discussing is taking a chunk out of next years surplus?  If so, we should probably move that money to the "rainy day fund."

[Teddy (IDS Legislator)]

Sorry for my intrusion; but, PAGEBREAK

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I was planning to take it out of the public debt, since that is still pretty large. Maybe set $10 billion or so aside for the rainy day fund.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     Now that Christmas has passed, I think we should continue on to other business.

[Yelnoc]

Any opinions on cutting the fuel tax?  Does anybody have any other taxes that they want to see cut, or areas of spending they think should be ramped up (looking at the budget).

[Associate Justice PiT]

     What if we scotched the Social Security tax? It's pretty unnecessary given our budget surplus &, assuming it is handled identically to federal Social Security taxes, is a regressive tax.

     P.S. I think we only use state as our base, not state+local.

[Pingvin]

Fuel tax must be included in the price of gas, and shouldn't be higher than 3% of the cost of fuel.

[Yelnoc]

Yeah, the SS tax doesn't make much sense.

And Pingvin, why not just get rid of it altogether?