Spoken like a true socialist, Part II
Saturday, I wrote this post to highlight Sen. Anderson’s statements about how tax cuts don’t create jobs. Here’s what Sen. Anderson said early in the roundtable:
The Governor was clear from the beginning that he wasn’t going to support this proposal. He wasn’t going to support something that was all about corporate tax cuts and very little, tiny bit of help for average people in the form of property taxes but most of it in the form of tax breaks for corporations. Never, ever work to create jobs and adding to the budget deficit.
As foolish as that statement is, Sen. Anderson wasn’t finished. Later, she got into this fight with Andy Brehm:
BREHM: The biggest problem we have in Minnesota right now is jobs and I wish this was as obvious as you guys are making it. But Minnesota is ranked 47th out of 50 states by the National Taxpayers Association, 47th out of 50 in terms of business climate. The governor himself has admitted that we need major, major reform. This was a step in the right direction…
SEN. ANDERSON: People have cut taxes for decades and it’s never, ever, worked to create jobs. It’s not a job-creating strategy and the governor has been really, really clear that that’s what the stadium bill is about. That’s what the bonding bill is about. And the fact is that when we were in the majority in the Senate, we knew that we would pass some tax bills that Gov. Pawlenty would veto. It was clear that he didn’t agree with us on everything on taxes. There’s really big, deep philosophical differences…You can’t just come in and get your ideology.
I can’t say that I’m shocked that Sen. Anderson would make such stupid statements. Unfortunately, after hearing her socialist diatribes on the Senate floor, this the rule, not the exception. It’s what I expect.
First, saying that cutting taxes has “never, ever, worked to create jobs” isn’t just stupid. It’s an outright lie. When Congress passed President Reagan’s capital gains tax cuts, Detroit’s Big Three automakers were falling behind Japanese automakers for almost 3-4 years.
With the cost of capital dramatically cut, Ford, GM and Chrysler upgraded the equipment for their assembly lines, making them more efficient and productive. Within 5 years, the Big Three had passed Japan. They’d resumed being the Big Three again.
The Reagan tax cuts encouraged businesses to create 16,000,000 jobs during the last 6 years of Reagan’s administration.
Liberals have argued that the big deficits were the reason for President Reagan’s success. Consider the oppressive debt run up by President Obama’s administration, then argue that big deficits are the key to robust economic growth.
Let’s examine another of Sen. Anderson’s foolish statements:
You can’t just come in and get your ideology.
Gov. Dayton, Rep. Thissen and Sen. Anderson are nothing if not ideological creatures. They’re also failures economically. They’ve failed Minnesotans miserably in terms of eliminating the DFL’s deficit. They’ve failed Minnesotans in terms of creating dynamic private sector jobs. They’ve failed because they didn’t do a single thing during the past 2 years.
Thanks to Rep. Thissen’s obstructionism, they didn’t submit a budget. They only submitted tax increases. The budget didn’t get balanced because of anything the DFL legislature did.
Meanwhile, GOP legislators can point to the permitting reforms authored by freshman Rep. Dan Fabian, which was the first House bill submitted in 2011. When the legislature returned from their recess, the GOP leadership passed another permitting reform bill, which further assisted businesses in getting the permits they need to expand their companies.
It isn’t coincidence that the $6,200,000,000 deficit that the GOP majorities inherited in 2010 has turned into a $1,200,000,000 surplus. That’s a $7,400,000,000 swing in 18 months.
It isn’t credible for the DFL to take credit for that swing because they didn’t contribute anything meaningful to the budget process. They didn’t contribute, for the most part, anything meaningful to the reform process. They literally didn’t contribute anything meaningful to the redistricting process.
Finally, I can’t let this statement go unchallenged:
And the fact is that when we were in the majority in the Senate, we knew that we would pass some tax bills that Gov. Pawlenty would veto. It was clear that he didn’t agree with us on everything on taxes.
That’s spin and then some. Saying that TPaw didn’t agree with all of the DFL’s tax policies is like saying that the Catholic church doesn’t totally agree with capital punishment.
Comments welcome at Let Freedom Ring.