To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. For progressive politicians, every hint of a fiscal challenge looks like an excuse to raise taxes.
As the 2025 Nevada legislative session begins Monday, there are already rumblings about the need for more money. The federal government has shut off its COVID spigot. As the Review-Journal’s Jessica Hill and McKenna Ross recently reported, UNLV professor David Damore said this means politicians will need to talk about raising taxes.
If high taxes solved budget problems, California would be a fiscal paradise. But last year, it had a deficit of $73 billion. As it turns out, you can’t tax your way out of a spending problem.
Nevada needs to stop going down this same path, albeit at a much slower pace. In 2013, the Legislature approved a two-year general fund budget of $6.7 billion. In his State of the State speech, Gov. Joe Lombardo called for a two-year budget of $12.7 billion. That’s a 90 percent increase in just 12 years. Total state spending will be much higher.
Population growth and inflation account for some of the increase. In 2013, Nevada’s population was 2.8 million. In 2023, it was 3.2 million, around a 16 percent increase. Since 2013, inflation has also risen by around 35 percent.
But Carson City politicians have also raised taxes. In 2015, then-Gov. Brian Sandoval pushed through the largest tax increase in Nevada history. That included a new gross receipts levy called the commerce tax.
All this new money was supposed to improve education. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
In 2016, Nevada voters legalized recreational marijuana. That tax revenue was supposed to improve education. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
In 2019, then-Gov. Steve Sisolak signed bills extending a tax rate and fee that were set to decline. The Nevada Supreme Court eventually struck down the move as unconstitutional. Neither proposal received the two-thirds support that the Nevada Constitution requires for tax hikes. In 2021, Gov. Sisolak signed a new mining tax to send hundreds of millions of dollars to education. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
In 2023, flush with COVID cash and strong tax revenues, Gov. Lombardo and legislative Democrats dumped $2.6 billion into education. That was supposed to improve education. Doesn’t that sound familiar?
You may have noticed a couple of trends. For one, more money didn’t improve Nevada’s tragically terrible education system. The other is that tax increases are only Band-Aids that temporarily cover up the main driver of budget problems — ever-higher spending.
Gov. Lombardo notes that his budget contains no new taxes. That’s true, but there’s more to do. Stopping tomorrow’s tax hikes starts with spending restraint today. That truism should guide the governor and legislative Republicans as they assemble in Carson City and deal with Democratic majorities in both the state Senate and Assembly.
