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Now comes the real pain? Mayors of big cities eye huge tax hikes amid lockdown fallout

May 28, 2020 | | Print Article

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A slew of Democrat strongholds are trying to hike taxes to exorbitant rates to make up for the economic damage engendered by the coronavirus pandemic.

Over in Texas, this week the Dallas City Council considered a resolution that would have allowed the local tax office to “to calculate a property tax rate that would increase the city’s revenues by 8%,” according to The Dallas Morning News.

The resolution reportedly failed to pass, though it generated criticism leading up to a vote Wednesday. But the criticism wasn’t aimed at the policy proposal so much as it was at the lockdown policies that some believe are responsible for the financial woes brewing in Dallas and elsewhere.

Look:

Note that what’s happening in Dallas, a Democrat stronghold whose lockdown policies were so strict a salon owner was sentenced to time in jail for desperately reopening her salon, isn’t happening in a vacuum.

Over in Nashville, another Democrat stronghold in a red state, Democrat Mayor John Cooper has proposed an exorbitant 32 percent property tax increase. And according to Bloomberg, the proposal is linked directly to the city’s lockdown policies.

“Nashville’s crisis is echoing across America. Just about every big city in the U.S. is facing revenue declines from weeks of stay-at-home orders, according to a National League of Cities survey,” the outlet reported two weeks ago.

“Congress has earmarked $150 billion for states and local governments — Nashville is slated to receive $122 million — but the money must be spent on public health and can’t be used to fill budget holes.”

Budget holes that existed prior to the coronavirus pandemic thanks to these mostly-Democrat cities’ widely panned policies have since been exacerbated by the severe loss of income engendered by their equally panned lockdown policies.

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, a currently red state that’s bounced back and forth between red and blue leadership over the past few decades, a group of 91 economists have begun calling for Republican Gov. Charlie Baker to raise taxes versus cutting spending.

“In a recession, balancing the budget by cutting spending has a more negative impact on economic growth than balancing the budget by raising taxes,” they wrote in a letter dated May 26. “Both the personal income tax and the corporate tax are fair ways to do this, since they fall only on persons with incomes and businesses with profits.”

But because Baker is a Republican who understands that the key to managing money is to cut spending, this proposal has been rejected.

Of course, that doesn’t mean he’s without blame.

“Is he personally responsible for some of that damage?  Yep. For maintaining the lockdown long after ‘flattening the curve’ had been achieved? Definitely. Is his current teary-eyed clinging to the rigid lockdown requirements based entirely on emotion and politics, instead of data and reason? Or course!” conservative commentator Michael Graham wrote in an op-ed this week.

“But all that would be true under a Democratic governor, too. The only difference is that she would be champing at the bit to stick the state with higher taxes at the same time while Gov. Baker says no.”

It’d be especially true under a Democrat president as well.

In remarks made last week, presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden said he’d raise taxes on business owners and so-called “high earners” right now if he were the president.

“So, you would repeal the Trump tax cuts immediately, and then raise taxes even further, right away? Even if the economy is still in the midst of this pandemic? Would you do that, if elected?” a CNBC host asked him.

“I would repeal the $2 trillion tax cut for the folks who are making over a million bucks a year,” Biden replied. “Because, as demonstrated, it’s demonstrated very little or no growth. … The corporate tax rate, I’d move back to what I had proposed at 28 percent.”

Listen:

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Vivek Saxena
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