Editor: GOP governors rally around trickle-down tax plans

One litmus test for being a bona fide Republican in recent years, according to Business Report Executive Editor JR Ball, has been the willingness to bow down before Grover Norquist and swear allegiance to the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. The pledge essentially says local, state and federal governments in this country have a spending problem, and there are exactly zero good reasons for increasing any existing tax and even fewer reasons for approving a new tax. “It’s a pledge that 95% of all Republicans in Congress were willing to take, as well as dozens of GOP governors, including our very own Bobby Jindal,” Ball notes in his latest column. Now, at least three states with Republican governors—North Carolina, Nebraska and Louisiana—are considering plans to dump income taxes in favor of higher sales taxes. After reviewing the proposals, Ball says it appears all three states are operating from the same playbook. “The solution, according to Jindal and his fellow governors in Nebraska and North Carolina, is to follow in the footsteps of seven other states and completely eliminate the state income tax,” says Ball, who concludes that Jindal’s proposal is essentially a “state-level brand of trickle-down economics.” “This theory, most closely associated with Ronald Reagan, wasn’t sustainable, for a variety of reasons, over the long haul at the national level,” Ball says. “It will be interesting, assuming Jindal gets his package passed, to see if it works any better in Louisiana.” Read the full column here. Send your comments to editors@businessreport.com.