Mia Love's Insane, Heartless Budget Proposal

posted 9/25/2012 by the Salt City Sinner

You remember Mia Love, right?

First black female Utah mayor, potential first black Republican woman member of Congress, wingnut who called Barack Obama "the food stamp president"...speaker in a prime slot at the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida. It's a pretty short resume so far, but it's certainly high-potency.

I've been watching Love's emergence as a political force with some interest. This is her first big election, and she's running against Jim Matheson - a truly loathsome "Democrat" and establishment creature who I would truly love to see replaced.

But replaced by Love?

Oh, my goodness gracious no.

The Salt Lake Tribune has an article originally out in July but updated earlier this month entitled "Mia Love's budget plan: Do her deep cuts go too far?" The answer to that rhetorical question is an emphatic "YES."

From the Trib:

[Mia Love] has offered a detailed blueprint of deep cuts to federal programs totaling more than $750 billion. 

It would mean whacking more than $2 billion of federal spending in Utah, slashing food assistance programs for the poor, eliminating school lunch subsidies and wiping out special-education aid. 

She would end subsidized college loans like those she used herself when she earned her degree, and eliminate funds like those that were spent in the city she oversees as mayor, aimed at preventing homelessness.

Very nice, Mia! Kick that ladder down now that you're scampered up.

Her hypocrisy does not stop there, though, at ending the very programs that she has taken advantage of to climb to her current station in life: Love's budget plan is available online  here  . Let's take a brief tour, shall we?

As Mayor of Saratoga Springs, staying on budget is Mia's top priority. The library and all city events are 100% run by volunteers, private sponsors, and donors.

While that's all perfectly Ron Swanson of her to point out, Love fails to mention that she also raised property taxes by a jaw-dropping 25% in Saratoga Springs (in fact, that cute "privatize the library" line is the sole mention of her experience in government so far) Anyway, what other wasteful expenditures that only help the freeloading Poors does Love want to gut?

Department of Commerce: End economic development subsidies 

Department of Housing and Urban Development: End rental assistance, end community development subsidies, end public housing subsidies 

Department of the Treasury: Cut earned income tax credit by 50%

Got that? Mia Love wants to throw low-income people out onto the street and kill job-creating community investment programs, while raising taxes on low-income people by 50%.

I guess we should have seen that coming from her screw-the-poor, raise-your-taxes reign in Sarasota Springs.

Now, I'm not willing to go so far as to endorse Jim Matheson's incumbent campaign, but I don't think it can be any clearer than this.

Mia Love is a cruel, hateful ideologue who wants to stomp lower-income Utahns under her heels, and she should not be elected.

Update/Correction: I wrote that Mia Love had hiked taxes in Saratoga Springs by 25% - my apologies.

In actuality, according to the Salt Lake Tribune:

Between 2008 and 2010 the Saratoga Springs council voted for three consecutive property tax hikes, including a 116% jump in the 2008 budget year.

So I actually under-reported her tax hikes by a factor of more than four.