Besides the flat tax, practically every tax giveaway that’s been defeated in the last five years is stuck into the Republican budget.
What’s that? You didn’t want more tax giveaways?
You wanted the state to Invest in Education and to pay teacher’s a fair wage? Forget about it. Arizona Republicans pride themselves in syphoning off public education funds and giving them to for-profit diploma mills, private schools and religious schools.
You thought it would be a good idea to restore the full $40 million in funding to the Housing Trust Fund to tackle the housing affordability and eviction problems in Arizona? Nope. Republicans are doing tax breaks for developers instead.
What about tackling Adverse Childhood Experiences, like food, housing and financial insecurity? No, Republicans like being worst in the nation for child wellbeing.
What about restoring funding for pre- and post-natal care? Access to prenatal care in Arizona is dismal, particularly for African American women and Native women. The Republicans studied the problem of healthy women and children dying after childbirth. You didn’t expect them to act on the data and increase access care to save lives, did you?
Tax giveaways and “small government” will fix everything and foster amazing prosperity, according to Majority Leader Ben Toma.
Thanks to Toma’s strong belief in deregulation and starving government with tax giveaways, the draft Republican budget has tax breaks for millionaires, billionaires, developers, “elite investors,” retired military brass, and corporations.
The Republican budget is like the Oprah Show, when she said “everybody gets a car,” except that Oprah gave cars to poor people, too. Republicans are “giving the cars” to the rich and leaving poor people on the sidewalk.
If a budget is a moral document, the Republican budget is an immoral document.
Related Articles:
Arizona budget plan would massively cut tax collections, create flat income tax rate
Some GOP lawmakers question flat-tax proposal
JLBC Presentation Re FY21 Republican Budget (spreadsheets)
The bad news just never ends.
The good news is the Republicans (currently) don’t have the votes to destroy state and local governments with the flat tax.