{"id":14422,"date":"2014-03-04T19:33:16","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T23:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/henrypayne.com\/?p=14422"},"modified":"2014-03-04T19:33:16","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T23:33:16","slug":"snyders-slip-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/2014\/03\/snyders-slip-up","title":{"rendered":"Snyder\u2019s Slip-Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Businessman-politicians often pretend that they are above politics, but they do so at their peril.Take the fine budget mess Michigan Republican governor Rick Snyder has gotten himself into.<\/p>\n

In an otherwise impressive first term, Snyder\u2019s refusal to compromise on tax reform in 2011 has come back to haunt him.<\/p>\n

Flush with a landslide victory in 2010 that also blessed the former Gateway Computer CEO with a Republican-controlled senate and house, Snyder introduced a sweeping reform of Michigan\u2019s broken tax code that flattened the business rate to 6 percent and closed special-interest loopholes, including a tax exemption for pension income (which existed in only two states).<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But by freezing the individual income tax at 4.25 percent \u2014 rather than allowing it to drop to 3.9 percent as previously negotiated by Senate Republicans (in a rare victory over taxaholic Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm) \u2014 Snyder needlessly exposed himself to charges that he was handing out tax breaks to his business pals while balancing the budget on granny\u2019s back.<\/p>\n

Typical of his style, Snyder\u2019s strategy was to please both Republicans and Democrats by balancing tax hikes (the income-tax surrender) with spending cuts (to the pensions jealously guarded by powerful public-employee unions). But cooperation with Democrats in Michigan \u2014 as in Scott Walker\u2019s Wisconsin \u2014 is a pipe dream, and he got little in return for meeting unions halfway. By sacrificing boldness for the center, Snyder marooned himself without allies.<\/p>\n

Pleased with his economic math, accountant-turned-pol Snyder ignored his own party\u2019s appeals for political sanity. Republicans ultimately capitulated to their honeymooning GOP governor\u2019s plan, but political insiders warned of the consequences.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy asking lawmakers to impose new taxes on voters\u2019 pensions while minimizing the inevitable confrontation with public-employee unions,\u201d wrote Leon Drolet, head of the Michigan Taxpayers Alliance, in the\u00a0Michigan View<\/em>, \u201cour new governor has invested too much of his political capital into the impossible \u2014 and not enough into confronting reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three years later,\u00a0Snyder\u00a0is getting a cold bath of reality<\/a>:\u00a0Democrats have made his \u201cgranny tax\u201d to pay for \u201cBig Business tax cuts\u201d a centerpiece of their longshot campaign against his reelection. (Snyder holds an eight-point lead over opponent Mark Schauer, a former Democratic congressman, in recent polls.)<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t have to be this way.<\/p>\n

Snyder\u2019s adept management of the state\u2019s budget has left a nearly $1 billion budget surplus \u2014 unthinkable just four years ago under Granholm\u2019s fiscal chaos. But instead of further reducing tax rates or using the money to repair the state\u2019s crumbling roads, Snyder is stuck fighting the tax-reform battle of three years ago.<\/p>\n

Having made a hash of politics and running scared of the Democrats\u2019\u00a0\u201ccandidate of the rich\u201d label, he\u2019s had to offer a strained olive branch to those making less than $60,000 a year, a new tax loophole called the homestead property-tax credit.<\/p>\n

Huh?<\/p>\n

The proposal, which restores a tax-refund loophole that Snyder had trimmed in his 2011 tax reform, has been mocked by Democrats as too little, too late while alienating Republicans, who are still smarting from the broken promise to reduce the individual rate to 3.9 percent. \u201cI understand it,\u201d GOP senator Jack Brandenburg says of Snyder\u2019s proposed tax credit. \u201cBut go knock on a guy\u2019s door and try to explain it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Snyder the Simplifier has become Governor Loophole. He could have trusted taxpayers with their own money. He could have lowered the tax rate for individuals as he did for business.<\/p>\n

He could have listened to his party\u2019s conservatives in the first place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Businessman-politicians often pretend that they are above politics, but they do so at their peril.Take the fine budget mess Michigan Republican governor Rick Snyder has gotten himself into. In an otherwise impressive first term, Snyder\u2019s refusal to compromise on tax reform in 2011 has come back to haunt him. Flush with a landslide victory in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,87],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14422"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14422"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14422\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14424,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14422\/revisions\/14424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/henrypayne.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}