When you’re a Republican, especially in a bluish-purple place like Minnesota, you hope you can vote for Republicans who’ll hold the line on taxes – even to the minimal level of not proposing new ones.
Sadly, we’re disappointed – as I discussed with Liz Mair on the show over the weekend. Senator Howe is proposing a tax on electric vehicles.
Here’s the interview:
I get the logic, sort of – it’s to replace some of the gas tax revenue lost by the increasing efficiency of cars the greater number of people driving electrics, and the people dropping out of the commuting force as telecommuting picks up speed.
But a Republican should be proposing fewer, not more, taxes.
And if we could see to some of that unsustainable spending, that’d be a cherry on the sundae.
I have a different view. Increasing the gas tax would be fine if they needed more money. Do they? Or do they mis-allocate the money they have?
It seems to me the source of the current problem is mixing dedicated funding with non-dedicated funding.
In my household budget, and in my small business budget, it’s all non-dedicated. Money comes in from wages, pull tabs, found on the sidewalk; money goes out to the highest priority bills, in order of priority. We don’t dedicate pull tab winnings to paying the mortgage because what if it doesn’t? That’s what’s wrong with the current model of highway funding.
The legislature must either go with fully dedicated funding, or not at all. Roads and bridges get all the money generated by this source of funding, trains from this source, grants to street mimes this source over here. Not enough money generated by your source? No moola for you. That’d be a stupid way to run the system because it lacks flexibility to meet emergencies, but it would force realistic expectations of income and expense from each source of tax revenue.
The other option is to toss all tax revenue into the general fund and then make a list of priorities. It might be the legislature decides funding street mimes and increasing welfare payments are higher priorities than adding lane-miles of highway, which would be stupid and short-sighted but if that’s what they decide, okay. Just don’t tell me we have no money for roads and bridges because you’ve artificially limited the source of income and stolen funds from that source to pay for other stuff.
Call me crazy but reading the Tea leaves I do believe MN could flip in 2020. Mainly because the state party wont be in charge of the Trump re-election campaign. They got destroyed in 2018 and need to clear house, but didnt. They need to see how the KAGA camp runs things. I trust then so little that outside of volunteering for the Trump re-election campaign I will not volunteer for the MNGOP, they aint worth my time.
I have nearly lost all faith in Minnesota Republicans, they all seem like Erik Paulsen. And that is NOT a compliment. They all seem to be #NeverTrumpers or dont see the shift and all seem like establishment Republicans. Someone tell me Im wrong. They have no fight and have no concept of populism. They could learn a lot from Trump, but want to live in a shell.
PoD,
The GOP will vote on Chair and Deputy Chair on April 27th. If Carnahan wins reelection that day you can then say we didn’t clear house. The current Deputy Chair is deploying in May, so he’s not running for reelection.
As to the federal groups being better than the state party, it’s a questionable issue. It was a national group that ran the Erik Paulson is an advocate for gun control ads. They used the State Party’s mail permit to get a reduced rate so I think it had the MNGOP’s name on it too.
2 major problems with 2018 compared to 2016 were; Trump wasn’t on the ballot so a lot of his supporters didn’t show up (especially first time voters from 2016), and Hillary Clinton wasn’t on the ballot so DFL turnout was depressed.