Thursday, April 21, 2005
How Tim Pawlenty Screws Minnesota
Britt Robson of City Pages lays it out for us:
... The state is currently wrestling with its fourth budget deficit in four years. Merely by making the tax burden on the wealthiest 5 percent of the people equal to the average state and local tax rate would produce hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Yet David Strom, president of the Taxpayers League of Minnesota and a staunch Pawlenty ally [PW butts in: Make that "Pawlenty's puppeteer"], has said the price of asking the rich to pay their fair share "may be less economic activity." It's a pretty desperate argument. Economic data from around the nation show no correlation between a state's economic growth and high income-tax rates--if anything, high-income-tax states have relatively robust economies. And if Strom is concerned about a drag on the economy, what does he think tossing tens of thousands of people off health care, as Pawlenty's budget proposes, will do?
More blogs about politics.
