Politics in Minnesota interviews House taxes chair Ann Lenczewski
Rep. Ann Lenczewski (DFL-Bloomington) tells Politics in Minnesota about her tax overhaul proposal and how it will affect Minnesotans, including how the current tax system doesn’t work. “…[I]n the tax expenditure part of the Minnesota tax code, we have all this hidden spending that people aren’t aware of. It doesn’t happen in appropriations or in the finance process, which people can see. It happens before all the revenues are collected for the chairs to spend money on.
And so it’s not transparent. It’s people getting benefits ahead of the crowd. The insidious part is that it’s disproportionately going to the wealthiest Minnesotans. So I’m trying to dissemble that and say that the answer to the deficit isn’t just about raising taxes, It’s about shrinking government. These are cuts; it’s getting rid of a bunch of tax benefit programs that we have that allow people to get other people’s hard-earned tax dollars based on the fact they’ve got high incomes. Instead of cutting the poorest folks, or middle-income people, which is basically what all the fiscal chairs do when they cut–those people are sharing hugely in dealing with this deficit. They’re getting hammered with the cuts that are going to happen.”
Read the whole interview here.
