Taxpayers Fleeing Democrat-Run States for Republican Ones
In 2013, more than 200,000 people on net fled states with Democrat governors for ones run by Republicans, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by Americans for Tax Reform.
"People move away from high tax states to low tax states. Every tax refugee is sending a powerful message to politicians," said ATR President Grover Norquist. "They are voting with their feet. Leaders in Texas and Florida are listening. New York and California are not."
That year, Democrat-run states lost a net 226,763 taxpayers, bringing with them nearly $15.7 billion in adjusted gross income (AGI). That same year, states with Republican governors gained nearly 220,000 new taxpayers, who brought more than $14.1 billion in AGI with them.
Only one-third of states with Democrat governors gained taxpayers, compared to three-fifths of states with Republican governors.
Top 5 loser states for Democrat governors in 2013:
· New York (114,929 people with $5.7 billion in AGI)
· Illinois (68,943 people with $3.8 billion in AGI)
· California (47,458 people with 3.8 billion in AGI)
· Connecticut (14,453 people with $1.8 billion in AGI)
· Massachusetts (11,915 people with $1 billion in AGI)
Top 5 winner states for Republican governors in 2013:
· Texas (152,912 people with $6 billion in AGI)
· Florida (74,094 people with 8.3 billion in AGI)
· South Carolina (29,176 people with 1.6 billion in AGI)
· North Carolina (26,207 people with $1.5 billion in AGI)
· Arizona (16,549 people with $1.5 billion in AGI)
The single largest net migration from one state to another took place between New York and Florida (17,355 people).
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Indiana State Reps Break No-Tax Commitment for Second Time
On Monday, the Indiana House of Representatives passed House Bill 1001, a $36 billion two-year state budget that includes tax hikes on cigarettes and vaping. Under HB 1001, the cigarette tax would increase from $1 to $1.50 and a 10% retail tax would be imposed on e-cigarettes and e-liquids.
Among the 95 representatives who voted for the cigarette and vape tax hike included in HB 1001, 16 were Taxpayer Protection Pledge signees. Out of those 16, 12 have previously broken their pledge by voting in favor of a gas tax hike in 2017.
The following Republican House lawmakers broke their promise to voters not once, but twice, by supporting tax hikes on Hoosiers:
Representative Robert Behning (R-91)
Representative Timothy Brown (R-41)
Representative Martin Carbaugh (R-81)
Representative Bob Cherry (R-53)
Representative Steven Davisson (R-73)
Representative Jeff Ellington (R-62)
Representative Bob Heaton (R-46)
Representative Todd Huston (R-37)
Representative Don Lehe (R-25)
Representative Jim Lucas (R-69)
Representative Jerry Torr (R-39)
Representative Cindy Ziemke (R-55)
You can see the list of those who broke their pledge by voting for a gas tax increase in 2017 here.
Photo Credit: Judy van der Velden
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ATR Leads Coalition Opposing Wasteful Expansion of FCC Program
WASHINGTON – Today Americans for Tax Reform submitted a letter with along with over 20 other organizations to the Federal Communications Commission in opposition to their desire to expand the E-Rate program.
The E-Rate program was created by Congress to ensure that classrooms and libraries had affordable access to the internet, but the FCC wants to balloon the program to provide direct services and devices to students.
Ensuring that students can continue to learn during the pandemic is an important mission, that is why Congress has already appropriated almost $70 billion in COVID stimulus for this purpose; and much of this funding hasn’t even been spent yet.
The E-Rate program is funded by a regressive fee structure that can exhaust billions of dollars in just a few months. Expanding the mission of the program to millions more individuals would only accelerate the depletion of its funds – hurting those who rely on the program.
Expanding the E-Rate program to provide direct-services and devices to students would be duplicative, wasteful and inefficient.
You can read the letter below or click HERE for a downloadable version.
February 23, 2021
RE: Addressing the Homework Gap through the E-Rate Program, WC Docket 21-31
Dear Secretary Dortch:
We the undersigned organizations submit these comments pursuant to the Federal Communications Commission’s rules (47 C.F.R. §§ 1.415 & 1.419) in response to the above-referenced proceeding that the FCC announced in its Public Notice DA 21-98 (“Notice”) of February 1, 2021.
In its Notice, the FCC focuses on specific areas of inquiry, including on page 6 where it asks for comments addressing “Funding and Prioritization,” stating that “substantially more funding might be needed than is potentially available to support remote learning through the E-Rate program." Our comments seek to illustrate how:
- Additional funding for the E-Rate program is currently unnecessary because of the availability of more than $60 billion in public funding still unspent from other congressionally created programs. The FCC should assist in these disbursements before considering E-Rate expansion.
- Ongoing and well-documented inefficiencies in the Universal Service Fund make the E–Rate program an inappropriate vehicle to deliver effective relief to students while maintaining the solvency of the fund. The FCC should work with Congress on contribution and distribution reforms, if the USF is to continue.
The CARES Act (Pub.L. 116–136) established the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Fund as well as the Governor’s Emergency Education Relief (GEER) Fund, providing for an initial funding of $12.8 billion and $3 billion respectively. Of the $12.8 billion appropriated for the ESSER fund, only $3 billion has been spent. Congress appropriated an additional $54 billion for the ESSER fund and an additional $4 billion for the GEER fund in the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 (Pub.L. 116–260). This makes a total of $68 billion currently available to support remote learning for students, including helping schools equip students with broadband connectivity, laptops, and tablets. Before moving to expand the E-Rate program, which is not statutorily able to support at-home devices and connectivity, the FCC should assist states and the Department of Education in disbursing these funds more effectively to better help students hit hardest by the pandemic.
The USF program provides funding to provide communications to areas of the country that are hard to reach (high-cost); rural health care; schools and libraries (E-Rate); and low-income support (Lifeline and Linkup). The companies paying into USF funding include wireline phone companies, wireless phone companies, paging service companies, and certain Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers. These fees or contributions are typically passed on to the consumer in the form of a USF fee. As many of these pools of contributors shrink, mobile customers increasingly take the brunt of these fees.
The contribution factor for USF has been on an upward trajectory for the last decade where it increased from 20% to 31.8% in just the last two years, putting exceedingly regressive fee percentages on individuals’ voice service. At the current contribution rate, if everyone eligible for Lifeline services signed up for the program, billions of dollars in funding could be exhausted in only just a few months. Simply expanding the E-Rate program, which also draws on USF, under current conditions is unsustainable.
Both the E-Rate and Lifeline program distribution processes should be examined for reforms. It is likely that distributions at the customer level will be more efficiently disbursed and utilized than distribution at the carrier level. Expansion of the E-Rate program before reassessing the contribution factor and distribution mechanisms will endanger all of the four programs that are part of USF including rural healthcare and the high-cost programs. The FCC should continue to work with Congress to use existing funds to support home-based connectivity during the COVID-19 pandemic. And, if USF programs are to continue, the FCC should work with legislators to develop the most cost-effective contribution and distribution reforms that reduce the strain on consumers and taxpayers before expanding any programs within the USF to protect its solvency.
The COVID-19 pandemic has created extraordinary challenges that require extraordinary efforts to solve. While the government works to ensure that students remain connected with their education, the FCC should continue its policy to support the work of the Department of Education and states instead of endangering the sustainability of the Universal Service Fund and all of the programs that it supports.
Sincerely,
Photo Credit: New America
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Public Health England Demolishes Anti-Vaping Misinformation
While lawmakers and multi-million dollar anti-vaping groups in the United States continue to spread misinformation about reduced risk tobacco alternatives and seek to deny adults trying to quit smoking the opportunity to save their lives, Public Health England earlier today completed it's latest analysis on all the scientific data as it relates to vaping and its efficacy in helping smokers quit. Their conclusion - based on science and not the emotional rhetoric favored by US activists - is clear: Vaping, which is 95% safer than combustible tobacco, remains the best possible way for smokers to quit, and the evidence for this just keeps growing.
Some of the findings included:
- Vaping is positively associated with quitting smoking successfully. In 2017, over 50,000 smokers stopped smoking with a vaping product who would otherwise have carried on smoking
- Quit rates involving a vaping product were higher than any other method in every region in England
- The 3 systematic reviews consistently found vaping products containing nicotine were significantly more effective for helping people stop smoking than NRT. This finding was supported by 2 non-randomised studies that reported higher quit rates among people using a vaping product who attended a stop smoking service, compared with those who used NRT.
- Most young people who had never smoked had also never vaped. Between 0.8% and 1.3% of young people who had never smoked were current vapers.
The update also expressed serious concern that "perceptions of the harm caused by vaping compared with smoking are increasingly out of line with the evidence" and this is "discouraging smokers from using vaping to quit”.
Professor John Newton, Director of Health Improvement at Public Health England specifically stressed: "For anyone who smokes, particularly those who have already tried other methods, we strongly recommend they try vaping and stop smoking"
With evidence of the effectiveness of vaping now beyond all doubt, it's time lawmakers stopped trying to tax and regulate a life-saving product out of existance, and actually let smokers quit.
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Lawmakers Should Reject Any Efforts to Undermine FTC Contact Lens Rule
ATR today released a letter urging members of the House of Representative and Senate to reject any efforts to undermine the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Contact Lens Rule. The rule was issued on a unanimous, bipartisan basis to ensure that consumers have the freedom to purchase contact lenses from wherever they want whether that is from their optometrists or from a third party.
Blocking the FTC’s Contact Lens Rule would undermine patient freedom for the 45 million contact lens users across the country. Passing legislation now, during a pandemic, also threatens to increase costs and reduce healthcare choice and access.
In 2003, President George W. Bush signed the Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act (FCLCA), which was enacted to ensure consumers had the freedom to purchase contact lenses from wherever they choose without interference. The new FTC rule builds on the FCLCA by requiring optometrists to obtain signed acknowledgement from patients that they have received a copy of their prescription. The FTC rule also continues to allow automated phone prescription verification, which is one of the most effective ways to preserve competition and consumer freedom. Rather than forcing a third-party retailer to wait indefinitely for a prescriber to verify the prescription, this requires the retailer to wait a full business day (eight hours) before fulfilling a consumer’s order.
These reasonable requirements were adopted because of cases where bad actors attempted to infringe on the freedom of consumers to fill their prescription wherever they choose to, whether that be through the optometrist directly or through a third party.
While lawmakers should support proposals that lower the regulatory burden and reduce red tape, there should not be concerns that the FTC rule adds to an optometrist’s regulatory burden.
Moving forward, Members of Congress should ensure the free market is protected and that consumers have the freedom to purchase contact lenses from optometrists or from a third party.
Blocking the rule will only make it more difficult and more costly for Americans to fill their prescriptions, creating unnecessary financial and healthcare burdens on the American people during the pandemic. Any efforts to undermine or delay the FTC Contact Lens Rule should be rejected.
Photo Credit: Güldem Üstün
“I am currently unemployed due to Joe Biden’s executive order to halt construction of the KeystoneXL pipeline."”
Americans for Tax Reform is collecting personal testimonials of Americans hit by President Biden's executive actions. (If you would like to submit a 15-second video, please send to Mike Mirsky at mmirsky@atr.org).
Here's the first example:
"My name is Daniel Kuhns. I've been a pipeline welding inspector since 2012. I am currently unemployed due to Joe Biden's executive order to halt construction on the KeystoneXL pipeline. I am having a very hard time to find a job that will cover all my expenses."
Virginia Election Update: Youngkin,Snyder, and De La Peña make bold commitment to Virginia Taxpayers
Virginia voters deserve to know where a candidate stands on taxes and spending. The good news is three Republican candidates, in their bid to become the next governor of Virginia, have done just that by signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge: a written commitment to voters that, if elected, they will “oppose and veto any and all efforts to increase taxes.”
Glenn Youngkin was the first contender in the race to replace outgoing Governor Ralph Northam to sign the Pledge, followed by Pete Snyder, and Colonel Sergio de la Peña. In making this principled written commitment to Virginia voters, all three candidates recognize that the problem is not that hardworking Virginian’s are taxed too little, it’s that the government spends too much.
“I commend Youngkin, Snyder, and de la Peña for making it crystal clear to voters that there will be no tax increases under their watch if elected,” said Grover Norquist, President of Americans for Tax Reform. “Virginia voters have been hit with several tax hikes in recent years. They deserve an ally in the executive branch, now more than ever, who will not raid their bank accounts. Instead, these candidates have committed to focus on making government more efficient, so Virginia becomes a more attractive place to live, invest, and do business.”
Youngkin, Snyder, and De La Peña join two candidates for Lieutenant Governor, Tim Hugo and Winsome Sears, as well as, Jason Miyares, a candidate for Attorney General in making this important pledge to Virginia Taxpayers.
Anyone can say they are against tax hikes, but only those who are firm in their beliefs will make that commitment in writing. Just ask the 223 members of the United States Congress, and 13 Governors—all of whom have joined approximately 1,000 state legislators across the country in signing the Taxpayer Protection Pledge.
Americans for Tax Reform asks all candidates for state and federal office to sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge. Candidates for Virginia Governor can still make this important commitment to voters ahead of the June 8 primary by visiting: www.atr.org/take-the-pledge.
New candidates sign the Taxpayer Protection Pledge regularly. For the most up-to-date information on this race or any other, please visit the ATR Pledge Database.
MN's SF 961 Would Double Down On Failure, Increase Tobacco Deaths
Americans for Tax Reform today submitted testimony in opposition to Minnesota's SF 961, which would increase taxes on life-saving reduced risk tobacco alternatives such as e-cigarettes, as well as increase taxes on conventional tobacco.
ATR Director of Consumer Issues, Tim Andrews, wrote: "This bill would have a disastrous impact on public health throughout the State, and lead to a clear increase in tobacco-related deaths in Minnesota. Evidence shows that when Minnesota previously imposed an e-cigarette tax, it prevented 32,400 additional adult smokers from quitting smoking. Doubling down on this failed policy would be an absolute disaster.
Andrews noted the growing body of research showing vapor products are an effective harm reduction tool for adults looking to quit smoking:
"Extrapolating from a large-scale analysis by the US's leading cancer researchers and coordinated by Georgetown University Medical Centre, vapor products would save over 52,000 lives if a majority of Minnesota smokers made the switch to vaping. This bill places lives in jeopardy by reducing access to these life-saving products."
SF 961 would also increase taxes on conventional tobacco, already the highest in the region. Andrews noted that "Evidence shows that increasing the tobacco tax further would have no impact on smoking rates, hurts struggling families and businesses and would be a boon to black market criminal syndicates. Smuggled tobacco already accounts for 35% of all sales in Minnesota, and this would increase even higher. As families and businesses struggle during the Covid-induced economic downturn, it is simply unconscionable to burden them with further tax increases that would benefit no-one except for criminal syndicates."
The full testimony can be found here.
Photo Credit: Doug Kerr
Ex-Illinois Speaker Michael Madigan’s Legacy of Scandal & Economic Failure
Former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan—the longest-serving State House Speaker in American history— announced last week that he will resign from his current seat in the Illinois House of Representatives, effective at the end of the month. Madigan has been a member of the Illinois House of Representatives for 50 years and served as Speaker of the House for 36 years, until being ousted from the position by fellow representatives last month.
His tenure as Speaker of the House has been plagued by scandal and a new federal investigation implicating him in a bribery and jobs scheme was the straw that finally broke the camel's back. He leaves behind a state that is far worse financial shape, with a much less hospitable business tax climate than when he took over the Illinois House of Representatives in 1983.
As ATR’s Patrick Gleason notes in a Feb. 19 Forbes article, under Madigan’s iron-fisted rule the state has significantly lagged behind the rest of the nation when it comes to job and total real GDP growth. Throughout his tenure, jobs grew from 4.5 million in 1983 to 6.1 million in 2019—a 35% employment growth rate. However during this same period national employment grew from 90.2 million to 150.9 million nationwide—a 67% growth rate, almost double that of the Land of Lincoln.
Unfortunately, total real GDP growth in Illinois followed the same trend. From 1997, when Madigan resumed the Illinois House Speakership, until 2019 total real GDP in Illinois increased by 33%, whereas the national real GDP growth rate grew by 65%. Total real GDP and job growth aren’t the only things that have suffered under Madigan’s watch. Illinois is also now buried under a mountain of debt.
Around the time the former House Speaker assumed office state unfunded pension debt hovered around $6 billion. It’s now a whopping $144.4 billion and Illinois taxpayers are ultimately on the hook for it. As one can imagine, having that much pension debt does not bode well for a state’s credit rating. As such, the state’s credit rating went from perfect to sitting right above junk status—making Illinois don the lowest credit rating in the nation.
In addition to holding the nation’s lowest credit rating, Illinois now also dons the 6th highest tax burden in the nation, has the second highest debt to GDP ratio, and is the second most corrupt state. Even more disturbing, Illinois saw nearly 2,000 public corruption convictions from the time Madigan first took speakership, averaging at one conviction per week, making the Land of Lincoln the worst in the nation for public corruption between 1983 and 2018.
No politician can be a total failure. Some, like Madigan, serve as examples for how not to govern.
Though Madigan is gone the mess he left behind now needs to be addressed, which is the hard part. Unless Illinois lawmakers can get unsustainable state spending and ballooning pension liabilities under control, Illinois taxpayers will continue to face the prospect of future tax hikes, something that was an ever-present threat under Madigan’s rule and will continue to be until necessary spending and entitlement reforms are enacted in Springfield.
Photo Credit: illinoislawmakers
WaPo Editorial: Dems Taking Advantage of COVID-19 Crisis to Push $1.9T Bill
The COVID-19 relief bill being pushed by Congressional Democrats and President Joe Biden fails to properly target aid to those in need, according to an editorial by the Washington Post.
Rather than “tak[ing] advantage of a crisis to advance other priorities,” the newspaper's editorial board urges Democrats to provide relief "on the widest bipartisan basis possible." This would also help Joe Biden fulfill his repeated, but seemingly empty, calls for unity.
The Post is right to point out that many of the provisions being proposed are not properly targeted to the COVID-19 economic and health crisis. Congress has already enacted over $4 trillion in aid, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Of this, $1 trillion is unspent and $900 billion was passed by lawmakers and signed into law less than two months ago.
Even former Clinton Treasury Secretary and Obama Chief Economic Adviser Larry Summers has expressed skepticism with Biden’s plan. Writing in The Washington Post, Summers argued that Mr. Biden’s stimulus plan is three to six times larger than the economic shortfall and that it will result in wasteful spending that threatens to cause future financial instability and unnecessary inflation.
Additionally, the American Enterprise Institute found that households are sitting on well over $1 trillion of savings. When the $600 stimulus checks were handed out, households with incomes above $78,000 saved $555 of their $600 check, spending just $45.
Similarly, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal saving as a percentage of income in 2020 was 16.4 percent, more than double the pre-pandemic rate in 2019, which was just 7.5 percent.
The Post is also correct to point out how Democrats are exploiting the crisis to push longheld progressive policies.
For instance, Congressional Democrats are attempting to push through a $15 minimum wage within the stimulus package. This policy not only does nothing to help the country during this crisis, but would further damage already-struggling businesses and cost jobs during a time of high unemployment. This addition to the stimulus package is clearly not presented as a solution to the economic downturn, but as a way for Democrats to answer to those who supported them: labor unions and the liberal base.
Biden’s plan also calls for a $350 billion bailout for state and local governments, funding which is entirely unnecessary and caters to the needs of blue states with bloated budgets and high taxes.
States do not need this aid as most have seen little or no negative budgetary impact because of the pandemic, with California reporting a $15 billion budget surplus.
In addition, as recently reported by the New York Times, Wisconsin expects to have money to contribute to its rainy-day fund, Maryland has increased its revenue projections, and Minnesota expects a surplus. In all, state collections declined just 4.4 percent through September compared to the first nine months of 2019, according to the Tax Foundation.
Congress has also already provided aid to states, including approximately $360 billion that directly went to state and local governments to help them respond to COVID-19.
In fact, even before the last $900 billion package, lawmakers had provided states and localities with 17 times their 2020 revenue loss and double their expected 2020 and 2021 loss, according to the Heritage Foundation.
With a House vote later this week on the bill, Democrats are attempting to rush this flawed bill through Congress on a party line basis. Several weeks ago, Democrats rejected virtually every thoughtful, Republican amendment to the bill. For example, Democrats rejected workplace safety assistance for small businesses, assistance for workers who lost their jobs due to President Biden ending the Keystone Pipeline project, doubling the child tax credit, HSA expansion to lower healthcare costs, and countless more.
While Biden came into office calling for unity, the first legislative act of Congressional Democrats is pushing through a partisan $1.9 trillion proposal. It is significant that even the Washington Post editorial board sees that this relief bill is about furthering the far left agenda, not providing targeted, effective relief to American families and businesses in need.
Photo Credit: Senate Democrats
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