House Journal: Page 6: Monday, January 8, 1996

 made a good start. With no debt, a balanced budget, and a 10
percent surplus in savings, we can give business a strong
incentive to either expand in Iowa, or relocate in Iowa. We can
tell a business, "Look, we won't raise your taxes for the rest
of this decade and beyond. Come to Iowa and grow." We have a
good transportation system, which through our actions last
session, we made better by agreeing to plow an additional
quarter of a billion dollars into the road fund over the next
three years on top of the regular growth. We have excellent
schools. By and large, you can feel safe in Iowa in terms of
public safety. And of course we have great workers with a
tremendous work ethic in our state.
That is a good start in creating a climate that will allow Iowa
to seize the opportunity to create jobs for our citizens so that
we can keep people from leaving our state and make improvements
in things like wages and per capita income. But there is much
more to do.
This session we need to key in on five areas:
1. Reducing our tax burden. The state is bringing in too much
money from our citizens and we need to continue our work of last
session by cutting both property and income taxes.  In income
taxes, we should index our income tax brackets to account for
inflation. We should eliminate the inheritance tax for children
and grandchildren, and we should make changes in our Sub-Chapter
S tax laws. We also need to relieve property taxes in a major
way by shifting some of the property tax spent on schools to
state aid. I hear from the Senate that we must "go slow". To me,
that means be timid. Ladies and gentlemen, this chamber will be
neither timid nor irresponsible. We can and we must cut taxes.
We have a unique opportunity to reduce our tax burden and make
Iowa a more attractive place to live. We mustn't miss our chance.
2. The second thing we must and will accomplish this session is
the establishment of a school technology fund. No one does a
better job of teaching students the basics than Iowa teachers.
Now, we must give them help to do a better job of bringing
technological skills to students and teachers. At a minimum, we
must enact something similar to what the House passed last
session - $15 million the first year; $30 million the second;
$45 million the third; and $60 million the fourth. This is money
that goes directly to the classroom and directly to help our
students. A school technology fund has to be accomplished this
year.
3. We will establish a permanent funding stream for our Rebuild
Iowa infrastructure fund. We do have an infrastructure problem
in this state, and we will begin to address it by doing this. As
many of you know, Financial World Magazine has rated Iowa the
sixth best fiscally managed state in the U.S. this year. We were
sixteenth two years ago, and we can all take pride in this
accomplishment. The only place we were downgraded in this study
was because we didn't do enough for our infrastructure. This
year, we must pass legislation which will allow us to have a
permanent revenue stream to help meet our needs for things like
deferred maintenance, the state capitol, state fair, and regents
buildings. We should do this by putting the interest (around $24
million a year) from our 1O percent surplus in the
infrastructure account, as well as capping gambling revenues
which go into the general fund at somewhere between $60 - $70
million a year and putting the remainder of at least $24 million
into our infrastructure account. By doing this, we won't get any
more dependent on gambling revenues, and it will allow us to
plan for our future infrastructure needs.

Iowa General Assembly

Index: House Journal (76th General Assembly: Session 2)

© 1996 Cornell College and League of Women Voters of Iowa

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