When 60 Minutes interviewed Ronald Reagan’s budget director David Stockman on the necessity of raising taxes, not cutting them, they wanted an example of someone crazy enough to actually propose such a thing. Luckily, Washington State exists, and so does I-1098, the high-earners tax. Tax cuts, in our situation, are bad religion, says Stockman:
Well it’s become in a sense an absolute. Something that can’t be questioned, something that’s gospel, something that’s sort of embedded into the catechism and so scratch the average Republican today and he’ll say ‘Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts.’
It’s rank demagoguery. We should call it for what it is. If these people were all put into a room on penalty of death to come up with how much they could cut, they couldn’t come up with $50 billion, when the problem is $1.3 trillion. So, to stand before the public and rub raw this anti-tax sentiment, the Republican Party, as much as it pains me to say this, should be ashamed of themselves.
I could not agree more with Mr. Stockman’s statement!