Tax-Cutting Folly

They just can’t help themselves.

Despite a sputtering economy, slowing tax revenues and unprecedented uncertainty about federal funding, Oklahoma’s legislative leaders are hellbent on cutting the state income tax.

Old dreams die hard? Perhaps. After all, generations of Republicans were raised on the supposed genius of Supply-Side economics – the theory that slashing state revenues actually increases them … to overflowing.

Except, of course, it doesn’t.

Less than a decade ago, a series of state income tax cuts left Oklahoma in fiscal crisis when the economy soured – something that happens periodically when your economy is overly-dependent on two industries: agriculture and oil/gas.

Back then, things got so bad the GOP-controlled statehouse presided over a statewide teacher walkout that helped produce the once-unthinkable: a legislative supermajority [required SQ 640] hiked gross production taxes to get the state out of the red.

Alas, in the age of term limits, few lawmakers who endured the political pain of displeasing Harold Hamm and other carbon barons are around to warn the current crop against the tax-cutting folly. So, off go Gov. Kevin Stitt, House Speaker Kyle Hilbert and Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, positioning Oklahoma on the edge of the fiscal cliff again by moving to cut the state’s largest single revenue source, the income tax … which also happens to be the state’s fairest tax, because it’s based on ability to pay.