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GOP: Senate Passes Budget Fix Without Raising Taxes

Senator Stuart Ingle - (R)

Commentary: Senate Republican Leader Stuart Ingle (R-Portales) said the legislature came to the Capitol in a Special Session to fix the state’s budget crisis without raising taxes, and it accomplished that. “We made some adjustments in the current budget and we balanced last year’s fiscal problems without raising taxes. These things needed to get done before the budget problems got any worse,” Senator Ingle said. “Now we have the checkbook balanced, hopefully we will have more money in reserves.  We wanted to get as much done on the budget shortfalls as we could right now, before we head into next year.”

But Senator Ingle said critical crime bills that could mean life or death were not considered because he said the Senate Democrats voted to adjourn instead.

“These crime bills needed to be heard, they needed to be fixed now,” Senator Ingle said. “Others say the crime bills can wait until the next session, I say these are crime bills that could mean the difference between life or death and  they don’t wait, they don’t wait at all.  If we had a death penalty back on the books, maybe some of recent heinous crimes would have not been committed, just maybe.”

Senator Ingle said there were three important crime bills that passed in the House that should have been considered by the Senate. Two of them passed by large margins in the House and Senator Ingle said they should have come to a vote in the Senate and become law. All Senate Democrats voted to adjourn around a half hour afterThursday’s session began. The vote was along party lines with 22 Democrats voting to sine die and leave without hearing the crime bills and all 16 Republicans at the Special Session voted to stay so the crime bills could have been debated and voted on.

The Governor called the Special Session last Friday to address the state’s financial crisis and to address the recent rash of heinous crimes in the state.  The House, early this morning, passed a bill to reinstate the death penalty and Senator Ingle said the Senate should have voted on it.

“The people of the state have spoken very frankly about the death penalty. Polling shows that 70% of New Mexicans want the death penalty reinstated because it could  keep innocent people alive,” Senator Ingle said.  “It just could make a difference between someone living or dying.”

The House overwhelming passed a bill, 61-1,  to expand Brianna’s law for those who intentionally abuse a child who then dies, and the House voted with a large margin, 49 to 14,  to add more violent felonies to the current Three-strikes bill. “We needed to expand the Three-strikes law to tell violent felons that they just made a permanent home in New Mexico state prison and they are not coming out,” Senator Ingle said.

The Senate did concur with the House changes on previously passed Senate bills  to help keep the state solvent this year and to fix budget shortages from last year.

The state’s budget shortfall was largely due to falling oil and gas prices along with shortfalls in other taxes such as gross receipts taxes.

To balance the budget, the budget fix did not include raising taxes and  included such items as transferring Tobacco Settlement Funds into the General Fund; closing a tax loophole; moving or sweeping unspent funds into the General Fund and reducing spending throughout state government.