Watch Your Wallet: The Legislature is Still in Session by By Clayton Mitchell

The great satirist P.J. O’Rourke once quipped that giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. Were he alive to observe the ongoing legislative session in Annapolis, he might have found his analogy woefully inadequate. 

While I have been out of town for the past few weeks, the Maryland General Assembly, led by an insatiable Democratic majority and enabled by Governor Wes Moore, is once again indulging in its annual fiscal bacchanalia at the taxpayers’ expense.

Among the latest misadventures in legislative chicanery is a proposed 2.5% tax on business-to-business services – a brazen money grab expected to net more than $1 billion. This is a classic maneuver from the left’s playbook: impose new taxes on businesses under the guise of sparing middle-class families, all the while knowing full well that these costs will be passed along to consumers. The notion that businesses will absorb this new levy without consequence to Maryland’s economy is the kind of economic illiteracy that can only flourish in the cloistered confines of a one-party legislature.

Even as businesses brace for this latest assault, Moore’s efforts to prune Maryland’s sprawling and bloated bureaucracy remain conspicuously absent. Despite his lofty rhetoric about fiscal responsibility, the governor has shown little appetite for meaningful structural reform. Instead, he and his legislative allies have chosen to double down on a well-worn strategy: spend more, tax more, and pray the economic consequences don’t arrive before the next election cycle.

Nowhere is this penchant for reckless spending more evident than in the ongoing funding debacle surrounding the so-called “Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.” Governor Moore, perhaps sensing the state’s impending fiscal catastrophe, had the temerity to suggest a modest pause in certain elements of the plan. But within mere minutes – literally, five minutes in the House Ways and Means Committee – Democratic lawmakers summarily rejected the governor’s attempt at prudence. Instead of responsibly reassessing the plan’s feasibility, they have chosen to hurl more taxpayer dollars into the ever-expanding maw of Maryland’s public education bureaucracy, heedless of a looming $3 billion budget deficit.

And then there is the Child Victims Act, a piece of legislation whose moral authority was never in question but whose fiscal implications were callously ignored.  One of the law’s chief proponents, Delegate C.T. Wilson, now finds himself stunned – stunned! – by the sheer volume of claims against the state, a predictable consequence of removing the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse lawsuits. With roughly 3,500 cases filed against Maryland so far, the state now stares down billions in potential liabilities. Wilson, after years of righteous advocacy, is now backpedaling, scrambling to amend the law and limit the damage.

Meanwhile, in a move so predictable it borders on self-parody, Maryland lawmakers have proposed a tax on sugary beverages – a paternalistic scheme projected to raise $450 million annually. The ostensible aim is to fund free school meals and childcare subsidies, but the ultimate effect will be to place yet another financial burden on working families who can ill afford Annapolis’s ever-growing appetite for their hard-earned dollars. Once again, the progressive governing class believes it knows best how to regulate personal choices and fill the state’s coffers in the process.

Throughout all of this, one thing remains clear: when the Maryland Legislature is in session, taxpayers must guard their wallets with vigilance. Rather than exercising fiscal restraint, our elected officials continue their unchecked expansion of government largesse, heedless of the consequences. Instead of streamlining government to meet economic realities, they create new taxes and pile new obligations upon future generations. And instead of learning from past mistakes, they march blindly down the well-trodden road of ever-increasing expenditure, convinced that the answer to every problem lies in the bottomless purse of the taxpayer.

Governor Moore, for all his soaring rhetoric, has proven unwilling – or unable – to curb this profligate spending spree. His occasional gestures toward responsibility are swatted aside by a legislature that views any attempt at fiscal prudence as heresy. The result? More spending, more taxes, and an ever-deepening budget hole that Maryland’s working families will ultimately be left to fill.

As this legislative session grinds on, the citizens of Maryland would do well to remember one unassailable truth: when government gathers in Annapolis, it is rarely to serve the people. More often than not, it is to serve itself.

Clayton A. Mitchell, Sr. is a life-long Eastern Shoreman, an attorney, and former Chairman of the Maryland Department of Labor’s Board of Appeals.  He is co-host of the Gonzales/Mitchell Show podcast that discusses politics, business, and cultural issues.