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Governor Walker has manufactured a crisis by giving the fat cats more tax breaks. His solutions to this problem that he created on purpose are forced cuts to the poor, working poor and the middle class in addition to getting rid of collective bargaining.

We do need to give some attention to our structural debt, which has been neglected by Republicans and Democrats with a result that it has grown to $3.6 billion dollars over the last 16 years. Over a number of decades, both parties have created loopholes and tax exemptions to give special favors to their friends, resulting in a smaller number of regular wage earners paying higher sales taxes, property taxes and income taxes. These loopholes are exempting many high income earners, not-for-profit corporations and for-profit corporations at the expense of the working poor and the middle class.

When I have engaged both Republicans and Democrats about this problem and suggested a need for remedies that make taxes fair by getting rid of exemptions, they tell me we can’t raise taxes. In Dane County, where I live, both candidates in the general election for county executive refuse to have a public discussion about the abuse of tax exemptions. The candidates say privately, “We can’t raise taxes and anyway that is a state problem.” They frame the issue this way when the real focus should be on how everyone pays his or her fair share of all taxes. When asked to publicly lobby the Legislature from their bully pulpit elected officials flatly refuse. Canned candidate forums refuse to ask them questions about the issue, because they accept the false framing of “raising taxes.”

And that’s just one county.

We need to do something to raise revenue in place of the inhumane and grotesque cuts made by the Walker gang. I suggest we:

1.) Repeal all sales tax exemptions, except those for food, for one year. This would raise $3.9 billion, allowing us to retire our structural debt.

Or…

2.) Add a surtax for higher income earners and count capital gains income as regular income.

I ask anyone to respond to this proposal and give rational reasons why we should not treat all taxpayers equally. Will Rogers is said to have said in the 1930s, “People want just taxes more than they want lower taxes.”

For more ideas about how to increase fairness and raise revenue go to fairtaxes.com.

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