| Former State Auditor Pat Anderson kicked off her gubernatorial campaign today, exactly a year before the 2010 elections and approximately three years after being dislodged from office by current Auditor Rebecca Otto.
Anderson's announcement is interesting, for a couple of reasons.
1. She's talking about new taxes. For a candidate who's supposed to be one of the two darlings of the hardcore right wing (along with Tom Emmer), to be talking about new taxes of any kind seems like an odd line to take while vying for that right wing's support in an endorsement race.
2. The taxes she's talking about are notable. Some DFLers have actually spoken in similar terms about expanding the state's sales tax to more goods and services and lowering its overall rate as one way to encourage tax fairness. The difference is, of course, that those DFLers also generally support a progressive income tax structure to balance out the regressive effects of emphasizing sales taxes as a primary revenue stream.
3. "We need to move away from taxes on productivity and towards taxes on consumption," Anderson said." Interestingly, 6th district Congresswoman Michele Bachmann has also spoken positively about the idea of replacing the federal income tax with a national consumption tax, a move that is supported by some of the rightiest of the right wing tax advocacy groups and would generally screw up the country's revenue streams beyond all repair. Nothing new for the Queen of Bizarro World, but for a gubernatorial candidate to be following the same line should be of note.
The bottom line is this -- I obviously don't agree with much about the way Anderson is advocating for tax reform. "Moving toward taxing consumption" is thinly-veiled code for "putting the burden on the working poor and the middle class for funding state and federal programs." Simply put, we all generally consume the same stuff, and if that's all you're taxing, the rich pay less as a percentage of their income than the poor do. That's unfair and won't be a workable solution to the state's revenue problems, no matter how big you make the subsidies for the working poor.
But for Anderson's sake, it seems as though she's opening herself up for some pretty effective attacks from her fellow Republican candidates on the issue.
Pretty interesting. |
