Memo to Marrow: No ‘free money’

During the recent debate sponsored by The News Virginian between Del. Steve Landes, R-Weyers Cave, and challenger Greg Marrow, D-McGaheysville, Marrow referred to the $125-million stimulus that was not taken by Virginia for extended unemployment benefits as “free money” and he said it has gone onto other states.

The video of this can be found at YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?

vD7tnkLEd6EU where you can hear a person in the audience correcting Marrow and saying that the free money is “coming out of my pocket.” You can also see in the video where Marrow smirks and shakes his head thus dismissing the man in the audience that he claims he wants to represent in Richmond as a delegate.

The troubling thing is that this “Democrat” candidate regards money coming from Washington, i.e. the federal government, as “free” money and disregards a taxpayer who understands that “stimulus” like this comes with many strings attached and does little to improve employment in the long run.

Also in this video Marrow brings up the idea of increasing the corporate tax rate. Virginia’s is one of the lowest in the United States. Numerous times Marrow has accused Landes of not bringing jobs to the Valley but here he wants to raise the taxes on companies operating and looking to develop in Virginia. By raising taxes, corporations will not be able to reinvest that money back into improved technologies, more energy-efficient and productive equipment, increased employee compensation and benefits and additional jobs. Otherwise, these corporations would look to move to other states or countries thus taking much needed jobs with them. And anybody with simple economic knowledge knows that CORPORATIONS DO NOT PAY TAXES. Consumers, like you and me, pay these taxes in the prices we pay for the products.

Most citizens understand that our government(s) have been spending and wasting taxpayers money for far too long and “stimulus” like this from D.C. comes with attached strings and does not correct the causes of the problems we now face.