Who elects these geniuses???
As Michigan struggles with crumbling infrastructure that we don’t have the money to fix, failing schools that we have stopped investing in, and cities in crisis from a collapsed manufacturing base, one Republican, Saugatuck state Representative Bob Genetski has a solution: eliminate the state income tax.
No, kids, I’m not kidding.
Michigan voters could decide whether to abolish the state income tax under legislation introduced this week by Rep. Bob Genetski.Genetski, R-Saugatuck, has deemed House Bill 4898 the “Taxpayer Freedom Act.”
“It’s something that hasn’t been revisited since ‘67 or ‘68, when the voters voted to allow a state income tax,” he said.
The bill would put the question on the November 2014 ballot. If a majority of voters approved it, the state income tax would be repealed beginning January 2015.
One small problem: Genetski’s bill does nothing to replace the $8.3 billion-with-a-B hole this would leave in our already inadequate budget. He glibly talks about preferring a regressive “consumption tax” (i.e., increasing the sales tax) that, as anyone who can bang two brain cells together knows impacts poor people far more than rich people. In fact, according former state House Fiscal Agency Director Mitch Bean, we would have to increase our sales tax to over 12% to make up for the cavernous budgetary crater Genetski is trying to create.
But, what the heck? This sort of blood-red meat is just the sort of thing western Michigan tea partyers eat up like manna from heaven. And when you have to worry about getting primaried by someone even more anti-government than yourself, destroying the Michigan economy is, apparently, a small price to pay.
[Photo credit: Anne Savage, special to Eclectablog]
