IP Guv Nominee Tom Horner will put out a detailed taxing and spending blueprint Monday that will show how he plans to balance the state budget for the next biennium.
The announcement will be made at a briefing Monday, at a time and place still to be announced.
The briefing has the potential to change the shape of the argument so far between the guv candidates, and will give Horner a chance to put some meat on the bones of his basic pitch, that he alone among the three candidates can take the best ideas from the left, right and center and embrace common sense ideas that are unavailable to the Dem and Repub candidates because they are bound by various elements of their party orthodoxy.
DFL nominee Mark Dayton has long-since announced a plan that relies heavily on increases in the top marginal rates of the state income tax. Dayton hasn't specified the rates or the borders between the brackets. But until now, he has had by far the most specific plan and has taunted the others to stop criticizing his plan until they put out their own alternative.
Republican nominee Tom Emmer has been by far the most mysterious about his ideas for erasing the projected $6 billion deficit, except to say that it won't involve tax increases. He has implied that he has ideas for efficiencies that will make it possible to balance the budget without cutting government services, but that will continue to sound far-fetched until he shows how he can do it.
More like this
- Still fact checking: Would Dayton's tax-the-rich proposal double the top rate?
- What if moderate Minnesotans start listening to Tom Horner?
- The 'Almanac' debate: A man with a plan against two without
- Some skepticism about the two recent big-Dayton-lead polls
- Dayton offers facts and logic defending his tax plan
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Comments (5)
I look forward to Mr Horner's plan. Against my expectations, I find myself leaning towards Dayton, based on what we know so far.
Mr. Dayton has very cleverly put his opponents in a box. Horner, being smarter than Emmer, finally realized that the sooner he gets a plan on the table, the better.
Mr. Emmer, of course, puts off definitively answering the question: What are you going to cut? Because no matter what he cuts, someone will be mad at him. It is pretty clear why he does not want to face the music in outstate Minnesota. Waiting until near the election to reveal all, will be the coup de grace for his election chances.
Mr. Horner is not in much better shape. His plan will have to call for raising taxes and will elicit squeals of pain from the no new taxes crowd. Generating significant new revenue, based on a regressive sales tax, will not be a net gain either.
Mr. Dayton has said, in increasingly more specific terms, what he is going to do from the beginning. And the absurdity of claims of class warfare and killing jobs from the GOP is blatantly obvious. How has that job creation by tax cuts been going under the current (GOP) governor? And Mr. Dayton has in his back pocket the argument that he is not soaking the rich, but only asking them to pay their fair share.
Note: There are more poor and middle class people who vote, than rich people - no matter how defined.
We will have to enact measures to reduce the deficit. These measures will necessarily have to include higher revenues. Initially, they may be called user fees, offsetting receipts or other euphemisms, but they will raise revenues. I would prefer that we tax consumption and not income, especially hard earned income.
"And Mr. Dayton has in his back pocket the argument that he is not soaking the rich, but only asking them to pay their fair share."
#2 Bill, Until we get a definition from Dayton of "slightly more", "more" and "significantly more" we don't know if he's soaking the rich or what "fair share" actually means.
Tim--
I believe that Dayton has stated that by 'fair share' he means the same proportion of gross income paid in tax as paid by those whose incomes are less than $150,000.
Currently those over that amount actually pay a smaller proportion than those under.