GOP Solons Need Some New Material

‘Tis the Silly Season, the annual legislative session runup replete with headline-grabbing Culture War proposals and behind-the-scenes wrangling over serious public policy aimed at determining this year’s winners and losers.

Mandating the Ten Commandments be posted in public school classrooms? Check. Ordering up another round of tax cuts? Check.

It’s a predictable election year potpourri that makes sense in the current political climate – if the GOP supermajority’s priority is to maintain political power. It’s very bad news, however, if Republicans think it’s going to yield a more prosperous Oklahoma future.

Let’s begin with Roland Rep. Jim Olsen’s HB 2962. He wants the Ten Commandments displayed in all classrooms starting with the 2024-25 school year. He even goes so far as to require which text is to be used – and the poster’s size: at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall.

Lordy, that’s some micromanaging, isn’t it?

In an election year, Olsen may persuade a majority in both houses to pass it. And Gov. Kevin Stitt undoubtedly would sign it into law. But the courts – applying the Oklahoma Constitution’s strict church-state separation – will have the final say.

The Constitution is clear. And voters made it even clearer in 2016 when they overwhelmingly rejected SQ 790 that would have removed the restriction on using public funds for religious purposes.

It might be tempting to roll your eyes and dismiss HB 2962 as Jim Olsen being Jim Olsen. But that would be a mistake. What may be lost in Olsen’s virtue signaling to GOP religious zealots is the damage it does to Oklahoma’s reputation nationally.

Every time the state loses out on a major economic development initiative, we’re reminded our public policymakers do us no favors when they seek to divide, not unite. Multi-nationals expand to places where their executives and their families want to be; where they can feel at home. Not where their religious, gender or sexual preferences make them second-class citizens.

Remember when the GOP trumpeted itself as the party of individual liberty and of keeping government out of private lives?

The Culture War isn’t alone in holding Oklahoma back. So is our tax policy that disproportionately benefits the state’s wealthiest residents. That’s where term-limited House Speaker Charles McCall’s five – count ‘em, five – new tax cut proposals come in. McCall not only wants to reduce the income tax rate – down to 4.25% – but also eliminate the state corporate tax.

It’s cliché but true: the devil will be in the details. But there’s little reason to think the GOP-dominated Legislature, backed by the state’s wealthiest interests, will do anything other than continue shifting the tax burden onto workaday Oklahomans.

In pursuing his tax-cut agenda, the speaker – who is believed to be eyeing a gubernatorial bid in 2026 – hews to longtime Republican rhetoric. Citing the state’s “strong position” economically, he insists “now is the perfect time to pass tax cuts and let the citizens of Oklahoma keep more of their hard-earned money.”

Yes, the state’s Rainy Day Fund is overflowing. And, yes, lawmakers will have $1.3 billion more to spend next fiscal year. But this also seems an appropriate time to mention that previous tax cuts left the state in a precarious position when the economy soured – a regular feature of Oklahoma’s boom-bust over-dependence on two industries: oil/gas and agriculture.

Remember the 2018 teacher walkout? And lawmakers forced to raise gross production taxes?

If McCall and Co. really want to help create a brighter Oklahoma future, they should ignore the Culture War issues, eliminate the state grocery tax, and only slash taxes for Sooners earning less than $100,000 a year.