I am shocked and saddened by the recent statements made by two members of the Republican Caucus of the Utah Senate.

By now, you may have seen the Senate Majority Leader, Scot Jenkins, outburst on the outlandish thought of exempting military personnel from having to pay property taxes while serving on active duty (click here for post and video).

Well, on Thursday, the trend continued. Senator Casey Anderson (R-Cedar City, District 28), while discussing HB 263, stood up before the chamber and claimed, in short, that military families should do one of two things: have a spouse quit their job and suffer financial hardship due do a forced relocation,  or break up a family because a spouse needs to stay behind to earn money at their present job while their military family member moves due to deployment.  The worst possible solution, in Anderson’s eyes, apparently, is that the state will have to cough up roughly $85,000 a year to cover unemployment benefits while the relocated spouse looks for work near their partners new base (for those of you doing the math, that is a show stopping three cents per year per Utah resident).

Don’t believe me? Lets take a look at the tape:

Boy, that doesn’t look good…eeee. Almost looks like you care more about your rabid anti-tax stance that you wouldn’t know a good bill if it punched you in the face. I mean, the idea of paying three cents more is so gawdawful that you are willing to either split up families or force them to suffer because, whelp, they knew what they were getting into when they signed up to serve.

This kind of fanaticism makes me sick. Far too often dogmatic lawmakers such as Anderson can’t see the forest for the trees. This same type of thinking creates lawmakers who will shoot down a revolutionary school education funding program because they perceive it as a tax hike, but make them more than eager to pass laws that will cost the state millions in lawsuits that will undoubtedly be overturned – all because we want to prove a point to the nasty federal guv’ment.

I hope that voters see these people for what they really are, dangerous to our state. At the very least, I hope Republicans are able to reign this kind of crap in because, frankly, they have gone way too far.

P.S. To contact Sen. Anderson, Click Here or call 435-263-5854