Not everyone is happy about the no-new-taxes state budget. In fact, certain members of the far-left are attacking lawmakers for not implementing new taxes in order to fund the Washington Education Association’s money-grab, I-1351. Most recently, John Burbank—the executive director of the Economic Opportunity Institute (a liberal think-tank)—wrote an op-ed in which he lashed out at lawmakers for not raising taxes and funding I-1351. Burbank writes,
“This miserable outcome is only because lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans — are afraid of being attacked for supporting new taxes, even taxes on the top 1 percent. They are worried more about their re-election than about stable revenue for public services, like education. So, you see, we are all to blame for this situation, because we all go along with the notion that taxes are bad and new taxes are worse. It seems like we think we can run our government on manna from heaven. But that ain’t going to happen.”
Burbank goes on to claim that our state will face a budget crisis in the future because lawmakers did not pass a state income tax. And, he proposes a fix to impending crisis… a state income tax. Burbank writes,
“They are about 10,000 families with incomes averaging over $1.2 million. They take home more than a fifth of all income in our state. If we were to tax their income at 5 percent, exempting the first half-million dollars they received, we would have about $2.5 billion in new revenue for the next biennium. With that, we could fully fund I-1351 and reduce tuition by another 25 percent.”
Conveniently, Burbank ignores the fact that Washington voters repeatedly rejected a state income tax. He also ignores the fact that just because he believes and/or promises revenue from a state income tax on high earners would be used to bring about the proverbial rainbows and puppies for all, it doesn’t mean it actually will. The reality is that revenue brought in by the state income tax in question will not be used for all the things that liberals promise. The track record of Democrats in our state over the past thirty years is all the evidence needed.
Evidence of truth exists in actions, not words. Unfortunately for Democrats in Washington State, they have a long track record of making promises, then doing the opposite.
Leave a Reply