I’m writing this for two reasons. First, Sen. Orrin Hatch seems to have blocked me from posting on his social media post. I have posted several times asking him to explain certain facts that seem to disagree with how great — according to Hatch — the GOP tax plan will be. I think citizens need to hear it all, pros and cons.
Second, and most important, I don’t think an elected official should ban questions and facts that disagree. If there is an important fact that does not agree with your “position,” you should examine the facts involved and discuss them openly. Discouraging discourse and facts other than yours is far too similar to the experience in Germany prior to WWII.
The following is a summary of the experiences in Kansas, a Republican state, when initiatives much like the current “tax plan” were implemented in 2012. There are compelling similarities. (All supplied by the Brookings Institute, William Gate, June 2017):
In 2012, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback sought to boost the economy by sharply cutting income taxes across the board. Under his plan, the tax rate on pass-through business income fell to 0. The idea was to boost investment, raise employment, and jump-start the economy. This type of supply-side, trickle-down theory has been proposed by Ronald Reagan, George Bush Sr., George Bush Jr., Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and many others.
The experiment with tax policy was such a failure that a Kansas Republican-controlled legislature not only voted to raise taxes, but did so over the veto of the governor.
Steven Wall, Holladay