“No New Tax” Gremlin Rears Its Ugly Head
April 9th, 2010 at 10:37 am By Jeff Van Wychen
MPR’s Polinaut reveals that gubernatorial candidate Marty Seifert has signed the Taxpayers’ League “no new tax” pledge. So eager is Rep. Seifert to tout his anti-tax credentials and toady to the Taxpayers’ League that he has signed the same pledge twice within the span of about a month.
Now might be a good time to review the track record of the last eight years of “no new tax” leadership, as documented in a recent Minnesota 2020 report and other sources. Since 2002:
- Minnesota employment growth has lagged well behind the national average.
- The number of road miles in poor and mediocre condition has more than doubled. Minnesota’s rank among the 50 states in road condition has fallen from 8th to 27th.
- Real median household income in Minnesota has declined, while national median household income has increased.
- Growth in average annual pay has been two percent below the national average.
- Class sizes have increased. Minnesota’s ranking on pupil-teacher ratios in public schools has fallen from 25th to 37th.
- Real per capita state and local spending on education has fallen by 5.3%, compared to a 1.0% decline nationally.
- Minnesota has fallen below the national average in public elementary and secondary school current spending per pupil.
- Growth in Minnesota Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is lagging behind the national growth rate.
The true believers among the “no new tax” crowd will argue that Minnesota’s performance has lagged behind other states only because we have not cut taxes enough. Don’t be fooled. Since 2002, Minnesota has cut taxes, charges, and other own-source revenue more than any other state in the nation. In fact, from FY 2002-03 to FY 2012-13, real per capita state general fund spending is expected to decline by nearly 10 percent after adjusting for shifts and takeovers. According to the Minnesota Department of Revenue, total taxes in Minnesota are “just about average” relative to other states.
With few exceptions, the anti-tax crowd has had their way since 2002. To the victors goes the accountability. The anti-taxers rightfully own Minnesota’s disappointing economic performance over the last eight years.
And this is not all they own. Anti-tax policies have contributed huge state budget deficits, accounting gimmicks that shift costs on to future taxpayers, and spiraling property taxes.
The goal of the state’s chief policymaker should not be to avoid revenue increases at all costs. That’s the approach we’ve been trying for the last eight years and it’s not working out very well. Rather, the goal should be to deal with the state’s budget deficit in a way that is least damaging to the state’s economy in the short-term and most conducive to sustained prosperity in the long-term. In pursuing this goal, all options—including spending reform and prioritization and revenue increases—should be on the table.
Tags: Budget cuts, class size, economic performance, employment, government revenue, government spending, income, Marty Seifert, Minnesota GDP, no new tax pledge, property tax increases, property taxes, road condition, School Funding, state budget deficit, tax cuts
For candidates for governor in this state, and perhaps for any other elective office in this state, signing that pledge ought to be considered evidence of one’s lack of fitness for the office. What’s more, since we all know people only sign that kind of stuff to buy votes, political pandering of that particular type ought to be met with the utmost skepticism, derision, contempt and disappointment. As a state, we must all recognize that such promises tie the hands of those who desperately need all hands on deck to resolve our state’s growing fiscal crisis. We MUST NOT reward politicians who take such short-sighted short-cuts. They can no longer be accepted as credible in the arena of responsible discourse and problem solving.
I’m not surprised to hear of Seifert having signed this pledge — doing so has worked politically for others. But it’s certainly not worked for the citizens of the State of Minnesota, and Seifert should be called on the carpet for this show of allegiance to closed-minded, irresponsible leadership. In 2010, signing a no-new-taxes pledge ought to be a one-way ticket to political oblivion. We cannot reward those selling this sham anymore.
Marty has it wrong! We should be taxing our way to prosperity!! The government will provide jobs and financial security to all! Why doesn’t Marty get it??? Most folks are doing quite well living off of the free money available from their credit cards!
Gary, I hope your joking – sorry I can’t really tell. You really think “the government will provide jobs and financial security to all”? Where are they going to get the money? Who’s going to want to work their tails off and put themselves at risk to earn all of that money for the government to take and give away? Take a look at Greece right now. The government is their biggest employer in the country and they are out of money. Can’t pay the workers. People are rioting in the streets. They are on the verge of complete collapse. That is our future if we get it your way.
Those stats above have so many links to overspending by big spenders that just can’t be ignored. I’m so sad to see the direction we are going. You can’t meet everyone’s needs with other’s dollars. People have to meet their own needs or never feel their being served well enough. We have reached and gone past the tipping point in this state an country. I’m afraid there’s no going back to personal pride & responsibility which leads to prosperity. That is the way you liberal people want it. I’m not sure who you think is going to take care of all of you when the government is broke. I’m broke too, but if my little home business wasn’t taxed 60% I might have a chance.
All I see from this supposed bi-partisan newsletter is people holding out their hand looking for more. More services, free healthcare, free this, free that. Demonizing those who want to be responsible. Nothing is ever enough. My kids school is dong fine, my kids get great grades, but the school is ALWAYS crying poverty. They have 5 meal choices at lunch, can pay lofty consultants tens of thousands of dollars to give the administration tools to make more goals & lists. There is so much fluff I can’t believe my eyes. We don’t need to increase spending for schools. We need to cut their funding so they have to get back to basics. The unfunded federal mandates need to go away and what happens in the classroom would probably look just about the same as it does now. Good luck to us all.
Please remove yourself for a moment from your high horse of ‘responsibility’ Jennifer. First of all, it was not ‘irresponsible’ of my daughter to be born with Rett Syndrome. Second of all, it was not ‘irresponsible’ that my husband and I both lost our jobs due to cuts in research and teaching. Please stop looking at life and the economy in black/white scenarios. I do not wish to pay taxes for a war, but I must because that is what my country and state deemed them for. We can not ‘pick and choose’ what taxes go for. If you, God forbid, have some incredible tragedy happen to your family, if you have bootstraps left to pick yourself up, yay for you. If you do not have ‘bootstraps’ I would hope that there would be help available to you. I will work to have that happen. If you are aging and enter Medicare, I will work to have that happen. Are you getting the bigger picture? Yes, there is ‘fluff’ my dear, but we also will work to get rid of what you call ‘fluff’
A few years ago, Grover Norquist’s web site (www.atr.org) printed lists of all pledge signers from each state. Fortunately, I printed out the Minnesota sheets since the site no longer seems to publish the lists. Norquist founded both Americans for Tax Reform and the Leave Us Alone Coalition. He will be among the speakers at today’s Tea Party anti-tax rally in Washington.
MINNESOTA SIGNERS: Pawlenty and Molnau; 15 senators including former gubernatorial candidate David Hann; 28 House members including gubernatorial candidate Marty Seifert and Eric Paulsen, now a member of the US House. National office-holders: Paulsen, Michele Bachmann, former Rep. Jim Ramstad (although I don’t think he was a zealot) and former senator Norm Coleman.
For those above who think we tax and spend too much, exactly the opposite has been proven true. During the Great Depression, Roosevelt implemented Keynes’s economic theories — including the use of government as employer of last resort, protection of workers’ rights and regulation of the banking system and temporary economic support for the unemployed. Until 1980, American grew into an economic powerhouse that led the world in innovation and wealth creation — and it didn’t do it by underpaying workers, making higher ed too expensive for most people to afford or neglecting the educational and social needs of children, or letting our infrastructure go to heck rather than spend money to maintain it. It did it with a progressive income tax that required the wealthy to give back to their country and state some of the wealth that liberal policies made it possible for them to earn.
I love it. Cut the schools, take away our kid’s future. Our parents got the funding necessary to run our schools with 25 kids per class & good bus routes, sports & music. My son teaches in St Paul where he has 50 kids per class. The match teacher across the hall has 66 kids in 1 class. My son has been told yesterday that ALL teachers w/less than 5 years experience will be laid off.How many kids in a class then? Should we cut more? My wife teaches special ed(autistic) kids in Apple Valley & they are doing massive layoffs & yes they still have federal & state mandates to cover. Free breakfasts & lunches(it is hard to teach a kid that squirms due to hunger). Yes, we can not raise taxes on the middle class, yet we continue to cut taxes on the rich. A person making over $400,000 a year pays 25% less if his income than in taxes then someone making $50000. Where is the fairness in that? But it does explain the drop in tax revenue.
Jennifer: If we don’t fund good public infrastructure there will be nothing, absolutely nothing left to defend: no bridges, roads, pipelines, airports, schools, hospitals and other public institutions and educated, caring and creative employees for public and private business. When schools make the level of programmatic and instructional cuts now encouraged by the ‘me and mine first’ mentality, they only can provide the most rudimentary instruction (notice I did not say ‘education.’) We all know that inventors and entrepreneurs are nurtured both at home and in the larger community. If you truly believe in expanding the private side of our economy, you also must support expanding excellent academics, including music; foreign language; fine arts and hands-on science at a level appropriate to every individual child’s ability. You cannot know what the next Bill Gates or Steve Jobs is going to look like, nor from which part of the larger community he/she will come. Only when we get back to thinking that we either swim or sink together and therefore your children are as important as mine, will we provide the educational offerings and systems that our grandparents sacrificed to give us and that, in turn, enabled our country and state economies to boom in the fifties and sixties, before we all decided to turn inward.
PBS series Spotlight on different cities interviewed one man (TP I think) who said: there is absolutely a role and a function for the federal government: interstate highways, provide for the common defense. There are those things that are clearly enumerated in the Constitution that everyone in this country ought to have to contribute to. Beyond that, there shouldn’t be any federal funding for — and you can go right down the line.
I have been wondering what kind of an America if our politicians actually adopted such a policy. Think of it. No other forms of transportation, no Social Security, Medicare and the like, no public schools, no health care except totally private (close those free clinics!), no FDA to determine if food is safe, or that our drugs are safe, no one in Weights and Measures to make sure the scales measure what is actually there or the amount of gas it says you pumped is correct. No higher education unless it’s totally private. No one to oversee our natural resources or to create parks in our cities. No veterans affairs offices or hospitals. No accurate mapping of our state. The list is endless. What a world that would look like!