The Republican-Tea Party Vision For America’s Future

By Yashwanth Manjunath

If you want a glimpse of what it would be like to have a Tea Party President, just look at what new Republican and Tea Party Governor Rick Scott is proposing for his first budget in Florida. Despite coming into office facing a $3.6 billion budget deficit, Scott plans to cut property taxes by $1.4 billion over the next two years, and slash the corporate income tax rate from 5% to 3.3%. Scott’s plan is to eventually phase out the corporate tax rate entirely by 2018. So how does he plan to pay for all of this?

By cutting vital government services for the poor and middle class of course! So what are some of these “wasteful programs” that Scott wants to raid?

Scott’s budget cuts education spending by 10%, which amounts to $4.8 billion in the first year. Even Republicans in Florida worry that Scott’s plan to reduce state-mandated school property taxes by 19 percent would be “devastating” to school funding.

He also wants to cut half of Medicaid spending on optional services, effectively crushing health care services for the poor. And Scott’s Medicaid cuts would cost Florida hundreds of millions of dollars in matching federal funds.

Here’s the kicker: Florida already has one of the most regressive tax systems in the country. The average tax rate on a low-income individual in Florida is 13.5 percent, while the average tax rate on the someone in the richest one percent is 2.6%.

This is the real “income redistribution” that goes on in this country. This is the Republican-Tea Party vision for America’s future.

By: