Tuesday, June 13, 2017

Walker's "Wisconsin Comeback" may be worse than Kansas Gov. Brownback's, which is now being reversed by Republicans there!!!

I've been calling certain Republican tax cut backers "freeloaders" for years. I'd like to say California Gov. Jerry Brown got it from me, but who cares...:
WND: The latest “gift” from Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democrat-controlled legislature: A $5.2 billion tax hike.

Gov. Brown: “The freeloaders – I’ve had enough of them. They have a president that doesn’t tell the truth and they’re following suit.”
The indignant response by freeloading "tax cut" Republican voters, who hate hearing the truth?
Citizens who work and pay taxes are “freeloading” on the system and have no right to complain about the tax burden government puts on them. It’s amazing how Democrat politicians get so secure in their elected offices that they think they can insult anyone and get away with it.
Yea, that's nothing like Republican politicians so secure in their gerrymandered elected offices that they think they can cut services, destroy access to health care and sell off public investments without consequences? Those damn Democrats huh? 

Basically, the "freeloader" label fits, and conservatives hate it:
All while they continue their political road to increasing the tax and regulation burdens on average citizens. Jerry Brown’s insult is the latest blatant example of that – following the insulting epithet Hillary Clinton laid on voters – calling them “deplorables.” It’s clear that Democrats have no respect for anyone who disagrees with their point of view.

All this is supposed to deal with road and infrastructure repairs – things that should have been done gradually over the years but that, in their “wisdom,” politicians put off and delay until it’s an emergency. It’s almost impossible to survive in California if you don’t drive. Our vehicles are a lifeline to survival for jobs, school and just daily life. Any changes in the price of fuel presents a major hit to every budget.
Anyone else detect the disconnect, incoherence and cluelessness in the above statement? Even worse, the articles writer rattled off the following list while trashing Brown and still pushing tax cuts. This is what makes conservative fiscal policy so unrealistically bad. Freeloader fits...:
As for the freeloading Californians he so disdains, Jerry has lots more in store for them. He still promotes his plan for high-speed rail from southern California to the north. Then there’s his plan for twin water tunnels to move water from north to south – original estimate $17 billion – but the construction overruns and costs to water districts, users and property owners is open ended.

Then, add state pension obligations, bond obligations, health-care costs and the proposal to pay all criminal defense costs for illegals living in the state who face deportation – and the fact that the state budget for next year already shows a $1.6 billion deficit – and you have a lot of freeloaders who will have every right to consider the appeal of getting out while the getting is good.

In fact, more people are leaving the state than moving in ... Consider yourself warned.
You mean the freeloaders? Sad. Funny thing, Republicans are always telling liberals to move if they don't like what's happening in their state. Well, back at you. There are a lot of other "deplorable" states to go to. 

Wisconsin to Fail Like Kansas? The Kansas Comeback was Gov. Scott Walker's basic blueprint for Wisconsin. It was a freeloader formula that gave baby boom politicians lower taxes now, but sky high taxes for their kids to rebuild whatever is left. Thank you? 

See if you can spot the similar failed policies in Kansas below, that we're now seeing passed in Wisconsin. 

You'll notice that this completely contradicts the GOP talking points that every state is unique, or those one-size-fits-all laws are bad. Let's be honest: Republicans have only one plan for every state, BUT there is one huge difference; Wisconsin Republicans will never roll back the tax cuts like they are doing in Kansas:
AP: Some Republicans see lesson in rollback of Kansas tax cuts: The sudden end of Kansas' aggressive income tax reductions serves as a cautionary tale for other GOP-dominated states about the pitfalls of moving too far too quickly … Legislators overrode Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's veto of a bill that largely rolls back the income tax cuts he championed in recent years. Income tax rates will rise, with a new top rate of 5.7 percent instead of the current 4.6 percent. The measure is designed to cover projected budget shortfalls totaling $889 million through June 2019

The state is ending an exemption for more than 330,000 farmers and business owners.

They concluded the cash-strapped state needed the extra revenue to fix the budget and raise additional funds for public schools.

In Missouri, the Republican-led Legislature enacted income tax cuts, and only if revenues grow, in what sponsoring state Sen. Will Kraus called a "totally different" approach than Kansas'.

"The people of Kansas, in my mind, are willing to pay for the services that they value," said Sen. Randall Hardy, a moderate Salina Republican who unseated a Brownback ally last year. "We're going to stop the hemorrhaging."

"We've been highly influenced by conservative policy think-tanks that encouraged us to keep cutting tax revenues in order to show a dynamic effect in the growth of our economy," said state Rep. Leslie Osborn, the Republican chairwoman of the Oklahoma House Appropriations Committee.

Bryan Lowry, at the Kansas City Star: These tax cuts, which Brownback had promised would lead to astronomical job growth, had really become politically toxic over the last four years. The governor promised to gain 25,000 private sector jobs a year during his re-election campaign and the state is nowhere close to achieving that. Kansas ranks 48th in the nation for private sector job growth for April 2016 to April 2017. The tax cuts did not pay for themselves.
Oh, and don't forget to blame someone else, just pick a villain from the GOP list...like immigrants:
At his campaign kickoff Thursday, Brownback made a point of hammering the moderate Republicans who voted for the tax increase, accusing them of the stealing from hard-working Kansans. He linked the tax increase to the amount of money the state spends on providing public services to illegal immigrants, citing figures from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center considers extremist.
NEW: I just found this great point by point break down from Brookings of the Brownback debacle. Another "supply side" failure:
1. Tax cuts do not guarantee economic growth. The Kansas experiment is a stunning rebuke of supply-side rhetoric put forth by tax-cut advocates like Arthur Laffer and Stephen Moore, who promised big economic gains. The Kansas tax cut resulted in no apparent growth effects.

2. Special tax rates for business activity mainly generate more tax-sheltering behavior and less revenue. A recent study found that Kansans found it advantageous to convert labor income into business income for tax purposes, even with a tax differential of less than 5 percentage points.

3. The Kansas experience is consistent with the view that people are more willing to pay higher taxes when they can see the link between tax revenues and the societal benefits that government provides. After experiencing the significant cuts to public spending, Kansans voted to oust some of the most conservative GOP legislators in the 2016 elections. In a May poll in Kansas, a bedrock Republican state, 59 percent of those surveyed preferred to solve the state’s budget problems with either tax increases or a combination of tax increases and spending cuts (rather than just through spending cuts).
The Bottom Line: 
The Brownback tax cuts were one of the cleanest experiments the country has ever had in measuring the effects of tax cuts on economic growth, and it showed that they were a failure. Congress can learn three lessons from this experience.

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