So on the heels of a tax cut for the wealthy that insults every middle and working class person in the state of Missouri, the state legislature has the chutzpah to put a sales tax increase on the fall ballot in order to pay for transportation infrastructure. This tax, in common with sales taxes in general, falls most heavily on those who can least afford it. Rich folks who have the means to subsidize politicians and businesses that depend on our transportation infrastructure to thrive  will once again benefit from the poor man’s mite.

And our Democatic Senator, the wealthy Claire McCaskill, is all for taxing the  little guy while the fat cats get off. She thinks the sales tax is overdue, should have been enacted last year, although she realizes that, coming as it does on the heels of the rich man’s tax cut, the optics aren’t too great:

“Is it my first choice on how to fund transportation? Probably not. But it doesn’t mean that I’m not willing to support it. I will support it. Because we’ve got to get some additional revenue for our roads in Missouri,” McCaskill said. “They want to talk about what makes Missouri an attractive business climate, well funding higher education and having good roads and bridges are way more important than Rex Sinquefield’s plan to do away with everyone’s taxes entirely and make us all into Kansas.”

I admit it. McCaskill’s absolutely right about the need for revenue. But since I’ve been in Missouri I’ve seen one serious need after another addressed by proposals to increase the sales taxes that hit the poor man disproportionately – while the top tax rate in the state remained obscenely low. Now it’s even lower. If Missourians take McCaskill’s lead next November, we’ll continue to be stuck with ever more unfair sales taxes every time a new need is identified – desperate need, that is, since the GOP-dominated legislature is more than content to let the social and physical infrastructure of the state slide until the conditions are so dire action is unavoidable. Every time Democrats go along with a sales tax when serious, progressive tax reform is what is called for, we are helping to put finis to the vision of a state that is just and where prosperity is shared by all.

The Missourians who vote for these GOP bozos need to learn what happens when their elected representatives chose to favor wealthy political donors over the working people of the state. The lawmakers that enacted the mindnumbingly stupid tax cut need to be held accountable for their shortsided, ideologically driven behavior. That will only happen if we don’t bail them out by putting the burden on those least able to carry it. Sure, it’ll hurt for a while, but it’s the only way we’ll change the direction of our state.

No on the sales tax may even benefit the state’s economy since those at the bottom end of the economic spectrum tend to spend the money that they manage to keep in their pockets, stimulating growth. Rich folks, on the other hand, tend to sit on their excess moolah.

A headline in yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch says it all. Describing the recent Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, the headline proclaimed that “Democrats defend party principles at dinner here.” That’s right, not “assert” party principles, but, like sniveling losers, they attempt to “defend” themselves from the bullies who are picking on us all and who, if things continue as they are, will probably get away with it. Claire McCaskill is willing to concede defeat, leaving us worse off in order to deal with only one of the many problems the state faces – a serious problem, but if we endorse her postion, we’re shutting the door to a real solution in the future, a solution that is fair for all. We’re also telling the big baddies in the legislature that there’ll be no price to pay for taking us in the wrong direction. Vote no on the sales tax for the sake of Missouri’s future.

Today the American Society of Civil gave Missouri’s infrastructure a grade of C-. These “report cards,” issued every four years, are an outgrowth of the Society’s efforts to draw attention to the vital issue of America’s failing infrastructure which, as an earlier report shows (Failure to Act: The Impact of Current Infrastructure Investment on America’s Economic Future), is a significant factor affecting economic growth and prosperity.

This report does not come as a surprise – Missouri hasn’t been doing too well in this area for some time and the Society’s 2009 report for the state, while nominally better in some areas, wasn’t much different. It would seem that the past few years of GOP stewardship of the statehouse in Jefferson City has not done much for the state’s infrastructure and the corresponding issues of economic growth. Nor is it difficult to understand why things have been deteriorating at the current rate. Just consider the risible response of House Speaker Tim Jones to the report:

In my mind, it gave me facts and figures to prove that what we were working on was meaningful and the right way to go,” Jones said. “We need to work on the electric issue, we need to work on highway funding, we need to work on our water, sewer and roadways in general.

Jones seems to be saying that the GOP’s heart was in the right place, but unfortunately, the brains involved just weren’t up to the task. They were on the right track, he implies, because they spent a little time considering a few issues that form an essential part of their charge as lawmakers – so no matter if they couldn’t manage to do anything. Speaker Jones thinks his only failure, one that he suggests is trivial, was that he couldn’t rally his feisty partisans to support his goals this year:

Funding infrastructure was one of the key goals of the recently-finished legislative session, and it could be on the agenda for next session, too.

In particular, Jones had hoped to  pass a one-cent sales tax to fund transportation. But that bill died in the Senate when John Lamping from Ladue filibustered the bill that his own party leader supported.

So let’s gauge Jone’s efforts. A modest goal – fix roads – and no result. I’m glad he feels good enough about his efforts to pat himself and his GOP colleagues on their metaphorical backs, although I’m a bit confused about how he can think of the legislative session that just finished as other than an abject failure.

I also have to say that I’m just as glad that the GOP response to infrastructure needs, a sales tax, has failed. Bear in mind that the same Jones who is touting a regressive sales tax to address a few selected infrastructure concerns, also supported a successful bill that would gradually cut already low individual taxes by .5%, phase in a 50% deduction for business income that is reported as personal income, and cut corporate taxes by 3% from 6.25% to 3.25%.

To summarize: the GOP response to infrastructure needs is make poor and middle class Missourians pay disproportionately for infrastructure essential to Missouri businesses via a sales tax. At the same time, one of their few successes, a so-called tax “reform” that the GOP pushed through both houses, would allow Jones and his pals to let those very businesses off the hook even more by cutting their already low income tax obligations to almost nothing. And of course, anybody but a Missouri Republican realizes that cutting state revenue this severely isn’t going to do anything for those outstanding infrastructure deficits.

Ironically, the only thing that stood in Jones’ way, at least in regard to the sales tax, were the ideological sensibilities and political fears of his GOP colleagues:

The sales tax idea went down in flames after lawmakers started to fret over the portrayal of the tax increase as the biggest in state history.

That’s tough campaign rhetoric to overcome.

What conclusion should we draw from the GOP reluctance to raise the revenue necessary to fulfill basic government functions such as providing the infrastructure essential to economic growth? I would suggest that, unless there’s a change in the makeup of the legislature, none of us hold our breath in expectation of a better report card four years down the road. I’m sure that the issue will, as Speaker Jones suggests, come up next year. I’m equally sure that the response will be just as befuddled and corruption-riddled as this year’s has been.

An excellent editorial in the St. Louis Post Dispatch discusses the disastrous effects of the GOP no-tax religion that some GOP state legislators, many lavishly funded by mega-rich, income-tax averse, retired investor Rex Sinquefield, are proposing to push even harder here in Missouri. As the Post-Dispatch implies, the already low state tax rates, far from promoting growth, have managed to reduce the state to a backwater that is near last in significant measures of quality of life – a factor likely to discourage all but sweat-shop industry.

A recent report from the institute on Taxation and Economic Policy underlines the fact that low, regressive tax rates are not exactly the panacea that Rex Sinquefield and his pet “think tank,” the Show-Me Institute (which the Post-Dispatch calls a “believe tank”), say it is. The report offers figures to support the fact that the tax burden in Missouri, along with the rest of the states, has been systematically shifted to those in the middle and at the bottom of the economic ladder. As the report’s authors note, “States praised as “low tax” are often high tax states for low and middle income families.”

The chart below details the situation in Missouri – and bear in mind that it describes the status quo, before the GOP tax masterminds in Jefferson City impose their particular brand of reform:

This situation will only get worse if those tax proposals described in the Post-Dispatch editorial are enacted. How do you think that income tax reductions, elimination of corporate taxes, and imposition of still more sales taxes to pay for necessary services (most recently proposed as the way to pay for long-overdue transportation needs), will effect the growing inequality between the wealthy and the rest of us?

And for all the folks who want to eliminate income taxes outright, take a look at this chart:

See Texas up there? Remember that Texas had a 27 billion dollar deficit last year. You know what that means: cuts to education and other services that help contribute to middle and working class prosperity. Just think about that when you hear some of the GOP tax gurus pontificating. And, of course, as the Post-Dispatch suggests, keep a watch on Kansas as it slashes taxes and hits the skids in deficit city.

As CNNMoney commented when reporting on the 7% decline in middle class income over the last 10 years, “The first decade of the 21st century will go down in the history books as a step back for the American middle class.” The same article also notes that the wealthiest Americans got wealthier during the same period, a trend that will only accelerate if we permit the state level GOP to continue to carry water for their rich friends and campaign contributors and destroy what remains of progressive state-level taxation.

James Moody, one-time budget director for former – highly conservative – Republican Governor John Ashcroft, observed that the Sinquefield cabal’s efforts last year to abolish the state income tax in favor of a sales tax indicated that “they don’t know what they’re doing.” And it’s not just ignorance that animates our GOP brethren in this instance, but willful ignorance. These are the folks who, to borrow Hillary Clinton’s phrase, have refused the invitation to inhabit the “evidence-based world” where their victims have no choice but to reside.  

*Charts from ITEP, Who pays: A Distributional Analysis of the Tax Systems in All 50 States, ITEP, February 2013.

Juke or Jook: fake, (football) a deceptive move made by a football player.  Synonyms: fraud, imposter, pseudo, fake, faker, pretender,  role player, shammer, sham.

How long will it take for Missourians to wake up to the fact that we’ve sent a pack of jukes to D.C. and to Jefferson City to take care of our financial welfare. You know what jukes are, right? Jukes point left and run right, carrying our ball right along with them, leaving us with nothing and no prospects for anything. Right now there’s lots of jukin’ going on.

The primetime juking is happening in Washington where the chawbacon economists that have hit the capital have been pointing left and screaming “I see a deficit,” while running right and trying to make sure that government can no longer do any of the things we want it to do. This week GOP House members announced their support for cuts in spending for infrastructure, national parks, scientific research, food assistance to low income women and children, community health centers, etc. There’s lots more pain in the their plans than I have space to list (see list of proposed cuts here), but the kicker is – get this – for all the suffering and lost opportunities these cuts represent, they won’t do diddly about the deficit. As Think Progress puts it:

In the grand scheme of deficit reduction, these cuts will do absolutely nothing, but they will have extremely detrimental effects for those who depend upon the targeted programs. This shows the folly of the GOP’s approach to budgeting, which leaves huge parts of the federal budget immune to cuts (like the Pentagon), while taking an axe to non-defense discretionary spending. These cuts outlined above total about $1 billion, while simply retiring (and not replacing) one carrier battle group and its aircraft wing would save $1.5 billion.

So, our GOPers in the house are planning to take a wrecking ball to vital government programs that have nothing to do with the problems they cited when they persuaded us to give them the wrecking tools. They’re doing this even though, when polled, Americans don’t support the proposed cuts and they will cost thousands of jobs. But that doesn’t bother our jukes; pols like, for instance, Missouri’s Billy Long (R-7) are sure they’ve done something big. According to the Turner Report, ol’ Billy  is patting himself on the back and fatuously proclaiming, “we got ‘er done.”  

Back home in Missouri, the local jukes are also hard at it. Remember how they whined about jobs and job creation before the election? And what are they doing to create jobs? Attacking unions, undercutting workers, doing their best to insure that if, by some miracle, any jobs are created, they’ll be the sort that nobody but the most desperate will take. These ideologically driven strategies are supposed to create a “business-friendly” climate, but as the St. Louis Post-Dispatch observed:

Business-friendly is one thing. Business-promiscuous is quite another. Before the state goes past second base with these suitors, it would be wise to ask why – given all the pro-business initiatives of past years – the economy is still in a funk. Businesses were given tax breaks, tax credits, tax incentives, low corporate taxes and tort reform. So where are the jobs? Or did they just pocket the savings?

Of course not all jukes are created equal. And by that I mean competent; I also mean our new State Auditor, Thomas Schweich. When faced with the task of analyzing the financial impact of the proposed mega sales tax/income tax swap that is being engineered by political sugar daddy Rex Sinquefield, Schweich ended up looking like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights.

The facts, after all, aren’t that favorable to the unfair tax, so poor little Schweich, fearing to offend King Rex from whom all favors flow, claimed that the job just couldn’t be done. Nope. No way.  No mathematical skills, models, or reasoned estimates could be employed  – although use of those tools is an everyday thing for financial types – like auditors – who are able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The upshot: Schweich looks like a fool;  he pointed left, but just hasn’t got what it takes to run the ball to the right.

The unFair tax proponents are themselves juking in a number of directions. One of the most interesting is the proposal to cap the sales tax at 7%. As numerous analysts have shown, such a low cap is absurd if one expects the swap-out to be revenue neutral. And, of course, those of us who raise this point are missing the whole jukin’ game. These daddies don’t have the slightest interest in revenue neutral – they want to force cuts, the more the better. Here, one should note that in some dialects being juked has another connotation – as in baby, you’ve been screwed.

GOP juke economics are ultimately an exercise in ideological strategy. If there is less money, there will necessarily be less government spending on those vital programs that so disturb the John Galt roleplayers and excite the wrath of Tea Partying grannies  whose bile rises at the thought of all those welfare queens living high on the taxpayer dollar. When the consequences fall on all of us, though,  Missourians who voted GOP will have nobody to blame but themselves.