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Truthout...
After Pledging to Not
Raise Taxes, Walker Proposes Hiking Taxes and Fees on the Poor and
Students
Sunday 17 April 2011
by Zaid Jilani, ThinkProgress
One of the most important ideological commitments of the modern
conservative movement is an opposition to tax increases. It is with
this ideology that then-Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker
signed Americans For Tax Reforms’ “Taxpayer Protection Pledge,” a vow
not to raise taxes on the people of his state.
Yet in his newly proposed budget, now-governor Walker appears to have
already broken this pledge. While the budget would lower taxes overall
— it includes $83.3 million in tax cuts “primarily for businesses and
investors” — it would make up for lost revenue by eliminating tax
credits and exemptions that primarily benefit the poor and even some in
the middle class.
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Wisconsin’s Legislative Fiscal Bureau — the state’s equivalent of the
Congressional Budget Office — finds that this would amount to a $49.9
million tax increase on people who receive these credits over the next
two years:
Low and middle income people would lose tax credits worth about $49.4
million over two years, the new Legislative Fiscal Bureau report said.
Those affected most by Walker’s proposal would include low-income
families who qualify for the earned income tax credit program, and
low-income homeowners who receive tax rebates under the homestead tax
credit.
In addition to eliminating these tax credits, Walker also has proposed
a spate of new fee increases. The “bulk of the fee increases are for
tuition at University of Wisconsin campuses, totaling more than $105
million over two years.”
It appears that Walker is less committed to keeping taxes down on
everyone than he is to cutting taxes for some of society’s most
fortunate members, while raising them on some of its most vulnerable.
He joins many other conservative state legislators across the country
who are cutting taxes on the richest while slashing services and
raising taxes for Main Street America.
Read it at Truthout
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