Tillis defends Trump's irresponsible tax policy
Published October 24, 2018
by Rob Schofield, NC Policy Watch and NC SPIN panelist, October 23, 2018.
It’s one of the great ironies of modern American politics that it is so-called “conservatives” who have become the most ardent champions of what can only be described as hedonistic, live-for-today, instant gratification public policy.
Think about it. A half-century ago, conservativism in America was, first and foremost, about balancing the books. Old conservative political warhorses of both parties like Gerald Ford, Everett Dirksen, Sam Rayburn (or, here in North Carolina, former Senator Sam Ervin and longtime state Treasurer Harlan Boyles), were certainly skeptical of government spending and often battled liberals over the advent of new or expanded public programs. But, at the end of the day, what principally motivated these men was a desire to make revenues match public outlays.
In this traditionalist strain of conservatism, self-denial and sustained sacrifice for the common good were vital concepts regularly impressed not just upon those who touted public services, but upon taxpayers of means, as well.
Unfortunately, in the 21st Century, the traditionalist view has been pushed aside by the ultra-Right’s embrace of market fundamentalism and “supply side” economics, which preach that tax cuts – especially for people at the top (the so-called “investor class”) – are always a good idea. The result, of course, is the mess we find ourselves in today – a situation in which key public services and structures have been permitted to struggle and wither even as the wealthy enjoy repeated and massive new tax breaks.
The poster child for this phenomenon of course, is the ultimate self-obsessed “what’s in it for me right now?” hedonist, Donald Trump. Sadly, however, Trump seems to have an ever-expanding team of acolytes and enablers.
Take North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, for example. This past weekend on the national TV show Meet the Press, host Chuck Todd pressed Tillis on the most recent federal tax cut and the latest proposal from Trump for still more. How, Todd demanded, could Tillis support yet another round of Trump tax cuts when “this current tax cut is clearly not paying for itself – the debt’s increasing, not decreasing, and there’s no sign it’s gonna’ decrease”?
Rather than acknowledging the obvious truth behind Todd’s question, Tillis actually defended Trump with DC-insider talk about “scoring for economic growth over time.” He then flogged, rather unartfully, the hoary and tired supply side line:
“Rationalize” is, indeed, the appropriate verb, Senator.
But, of course, Tillis is far from the only prominent 21st century North Carolina conservative pushing shortsighted and fiscally irresponsible policies. Tillis’s former colleagues in the General Assembly are taking just such action with their proposed constitutional amendment to lower the maximum cap on the state income tax.
As Michael Leachman, Senior Director of State Fiscal Research at the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, explained in a recent post entitled “North Carolina Tax Cap Threatens Funding for Public Services,” there is little to distinguish the two proposals:
Leachman goes on to explain that there’s also “no reason to believe” that the proposed tax cap will in any way support the cause of broad-based economic prosperity. Not only do reams of research point in the opposite direction, so too does the real world experience of states like Kansas.
In other words, there is precious little to distinguish the income tax cap proposal from the Trump-Tillis “let’s party today and the hell with tomorrow” approach to federal tax policy. Both mortgage the future for the benefit of the wealthy and in service of the discredited trickledown economics idea that we can simply grow our way to fiscal health.
Several decades ago, Senator Dirksen famously expressed his fear that the United States might “commit fiscal suicide on the installment plan.” Sadly, today, it seems that modern conservatives are determined to pursue such a course in an even shorter time frame.
October 26, 2018 at 4:48 pm
Johnny Hiott says:
Sadly this is much the same idiocy which has been forced more and more on American taxpayers. The democrats constantly demand that ALL of ones earnings go to government and believe govt. should control of how much income taxpayers are allowed. It is known as communism. Government no longer taxes citizens it extorts money from them. Government (democrats) wish to control everything leaving the people with only what democrats think they should have. The only way to stop govt. from taking everything is to stop giving it money to grow. This happens to be a rare occasion which I agree with tillis ! The answer to the debt problem is to hold those in govt. accountable and stop the billions of dollars used to hire ever more bureaucrats who lack sense enough to lead a cat out of an ice house with a warm bowl of milk.
