Tom Horner may have been a Republican – 20-30 years ago – but he’s a candidate only a tax-and-spend liberal could love.

His “plan” – like Mark Dayton’s – is chock full of holes, and will need to jack up taxes a lot more than he thought, says the State Department of Revenue:

Since announcing his plan in August, Horner has offered few specifics as to how he’d get another $1.3 billion out of the state sales tax. In addition to extending the tax to other goods and services, he also would lower the rate — now at 6.875 percent — by one percentage point. Counties, however, would be allowed to increase their local sales tax by one-half percentage point to offset Horner’s proposed reductions in state aid.

On the one hand, that’s not a totally bad thing; driving accountability down and de-emphasizing the LGA money-laundering machine is not a bad idea.

Problem is, Horner is still trying to balance the budget largely with tax hikes:

State Revenue Commissioner Ward Einess said his department has never analyzed the Horner plan in depth because it was not given the details needed for such an analysis. But, he said, Horner would have to be “very aggressive” in ending exemptions to reach his goal.

The process “gets real ugly, real fast,” Einess said.

For Horner to accomplish his goal, state revenue officials said the sales tax base would have to be expanded by 34 percent.

Wow.  That’s a lot of new taxes for someone the DFL has been trying to christen a “Republican” for the past couple of weeks…