Jason Lewis thinks nobody noticed budget cuts. And taxes are "plunder."

We can't compete with Jason Lewis when it comes to  pushing hot buttons and provoking ideological flamers, left and right.  

Our Feb. 21 front-page Sunday Star Tribune Op-Ex commentary, making a reasoned,  pro-business case for raising taxes, to address our historic budget crisis and to continue investing in human capital and infrastructure,  elicited 36 comments.   Maybe we just weren't wild and crazy and intemperate enough to generate real excitement and panic.  In the piece, Charlie Quimby and I  allowed as how some business tax cuts also might make sense and that government needs to get serious about accountability and redesign. 

 Right-wing talk-show provocateur Lewis's response on Feb. 26, five days later and inside the paper at the bottom of the regular op-ed page,  drew 113 comments as of this morning.   We've gotten some requests to respond and I shared these rebuttal points with George Sundquist, a retired sheet-metal workers union representative  from Duluth, and George said he intended to write a letter to the editor.  So watch for that.  In the meantime, here are our main points in response to Lewis, which we also will post as comments appended to both our our op-ed and the Lewis article.

Lewis throws together a mishmash of selective statistics, including a relatively small gas tax increase two years ago, trying to make the case that government has grown.   But he failed to effectively refute the most important bottom-line fact we revealed: our state and local  governments are smaller,  and spending and taxes as a percent of our total personal income are considerably smaller,  than they were a decade ago.   

Among Lewis'  three most problematic assertions: One, Lewis cites a $6.6 billion gas tax hike in 2008 and forgets to note that this sum is a 10-year cumulative total, and that the state's business lobby led the effort to override Gov. Tim Palenty's veto, to make up for a 20-year lag  in transportation investment, a disinvestment crisis that  Pawlenty had acknowledged.  Two, Lewis says the Legislature “decided to spend’’ $2.2 billion in 2007, a brief surplus during a decade of chronic shortfall,  and overlooks the fact that much of that funding went to replenish reserves and pay back accounting shifts from the previous budget crisis. Three, Lewis stubbornly clings to state income tax statistics alone, not the actual bottom line for all taxes,  to dispute the real and unfair advantage that wealthy citizens enjoy in total state-local tax incidence.

But beyond these facts and perhaps worst of all, Lewis quotes a fellow libertarian who describes the lawful and necessary tax obligations of our own democratic governments as an “instrument of plunder.’’   This notion, of our own local, state and federal governments as illegitimate thieves, is simply unacceptable.  This dangerous canard  increasingly is expressed in  Tea Party messaging.  

Finally, Lewis makes a decidedly out-of-touch assertion  that “no one’s noticed’’ the huge and unprecedented budget cuts and unallotments imposed unilaterally by Gov. Tim Pawlenty.  Lewis by all accounts is paid very well for his inflammatory anti-government  radio talk and it might be that he probably hasn’t noticed any personal impact from state and local goverment budget cuts.   But he really needs to talk to families who have lost their MinnesotaCare coverage, or who can’t afford skyrocketing college tuition, because of cuts to our vital public services.  They, and most of the rest of us, are noticing.

Dane Smith

 p.s.  We do appreciate the headline on the Lewis piece, "Higher taxes?  Oh, they make it sound so swell!'' 

 

 

Comments

[RalfW]

Y'know, I've been pondering the gas tax in light of the GOP failing to muster even three members with the courage to override the GAMC veto.

Other than the handful of GOP electeds who lost jobs over the gas tax override, who hears anything about the gas tax now? I guess I just never listen to Jason Lewis, but other than him, is anyone even noticing the few cents per gallon of added gas tax?

The price at the pump fluctuates more than the total new levy on a weekly basis - who can tell that the additional gas tax ever took effect?

[Nick]

The price at the pump fluctuates more than the total new levy on a weekly basis - who can tell that the additional gas tax ever took effect? http://www.mediafiretorrent.com