Every week I hear from families across our state who sit down at the kitchen table and try to make the numbers work. Groceries cost more. Rent costs more. Gas costs more. Interest rates are higher. Times are tough, and New Mexicans have every right to ask their leaders for relief.
Now that the election is over, let me be clear about what our politicians are offering instead. It’s not relief. It’s socialism, dressed up in the language of so-called “affordability.”
New Mexico already offers “free” college tuition. Now the state has rolled out “free” child care for every family regardless of income, including households earning more than $200,000 a year. What’s next? Politicians now want a government-run “free” health plan, along with bigger SNAP and Medicaid programs paid for with state dollars. Free this, free that, free everything!!
At some point we have to be honest with each other. Nothing is free. Every one of these promises is paid for by someone, and that someone is you. You pay through higher taxes. You pay through a state budget that has exploded in size by 78% in just 6 years! And you pay through government services that get worse as the state tries to do everything for everyone.
History tells us how this story ends. Venezuela was once one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America. Its leaders used an oil boom to promise free everything. When oil prices fell, the money ran out, store shelves went empty, and more than seven million people fled. The Soviet Union and Cuba made similar promises and delivered shortages, bread lines and stagnant wages. Nowhere has socialism delivered the rising incomes it promised. To the disappointment of self-proclaimed socialist politicians in New Mexico, free markets, entrepreneurship, and hard work have.
That should concern every New Mexican, because our state budget also rides on oil and gas. Building permanent entitlements on a revenue stream that rises and falls with world prices is not a plan. It is a gamble with your family’s future.
Republicans in the Roundhouse believe real affordability means letting you keep more of what you earn. Every Republican legislator co-sponsored a Citizen Income Tax Rebate that would return $500 to every eligible New Mexican, every year, from our oil and gas windfall. For a family of four, that is $2,000 annually. We have also explored eliminating the state personal income tax, expanding the child tax credit, cutting the gross receipts tax that hits nearly everything you buy, and repealing the state gas tax entirely.
Democrats, who call themselves the champions of affordability, refused to even hear many of these ideas or voted to kill them. Unfortunately, their press releases aren’t going to put more money in your pocket.
Rest assured, Senate Republicans will keep fighting for real relief: lower taxes, bigger paychecks, and a government that lives within its means. You work hard for your money. You should be the one who decides how to spend it. New Mexico, remember this: Socialism is NOT “Affordability.”
Bill Sharer is a New Mexico Senator for District 1, which includes parts of San Juan County.
