Walker’s Tax Philosophy — Debunked…again

Gov. Scott Walker is dead-set on repeating all of the mistakes of the Bush administration which caused the national economic collapse.

Walker has called for over $5 billion in tax breaks, shifts and loopholes that will require drastic cuts to education, health care and yank cops and firefighters off the streets. Instead of prioritizing job creation, Walker has chosen to reward his ideological allies and donors, championing ill-advised deregulation, costly privatization and anti-corporate accountability.

Walker’s plan even includes ending the state’s corporate income tax altogether — at a staggering $1.5 billion price tag for the biennium.

A story in today’s Wisconsin State Journal talks about Walker’s plan to try and make Wisconsin more attractive that Illinois, tax-wise, in light of Illinois’ plan to increase its corporate tax rate and some individual income tax rates.

Most notable, however, is a graphic about the individual and corporate income tax rates in the upper Midwest, which if Walker was interested in learning from mistakes, would take to heart and end this nonsense about hacking the state’s corporate income tax rate.

The WSJ data shows that amongst the Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin, Michigan is near the bottom in both its corporate income tax rate (4.95 percent) and its top individual tax rate (4.35 percent).

With all due respect to Michiganders, the state of Michigan has regularly had the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation and is among the highest in the nation for home foreclosures.

Walker has already decided to put the Commerce Department in the hands of his corporate donors — modeled after Indiana — and its unemployment rate that’s 33% higher than Wisconsin’s.

The facts are the facts: A state’s economy is predicated on its ability to generate revenue to support infrastructures like education, health care, safety and transportation.

The economic and jobs failure of Michigan’s low corporate tax rate and its low individual income tax rate for the wealthy should be a warning to Walker and his GOP-majority allies in the state legislature.

So far, however, economics and history appear to be courses Walker avoided during his abbreviated time in college.