Tim Eyman confirms his worst nightmare: Progressive tax reform for Washington State

In the late 1990s, before he became a promi­nent sales­man of destruc­tive right wing ini­tia­tives, Tim Eyman was a sell­er of wrist­watch­es to fra­ter­ni­ties. After dis­cov­er­ing just how lucra­tive sell­ing ini­tia­tives to wealthy con­ser­v­a­tive donors could be, Eyman aban­doned his wrist­watch busi­ness and became a full-time, rich­ly com­pen­sat­ed ini­tia­tive pitch­man — an occu­pa­tion he con­tin­ues to hold.

Some­thing that’s played a big role in keep­ing Eyman in busi­ness for over fif­teen years is Wash­ing­ton State’s hor­ri­bly regres­sive tax struc­ture, which is the worst in the nation. We have a tax code that requires mid­dle and low income fam­i­lies to pay a much larg­er per­cent­age of their income in dues to the state than wealthy families.

This bro­ken tax code has been the gift that keeps on giv­ing for Tim Eyman, in two impor­tant ways. First, it helps keep the gears of his ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry lubri­cat­ed with cash. Wealthy right wing donors like liv­ing in a state where they can get what amounts to a free ride, and they’re only too hap­py to open their check­books for Tim, who uses some of their mon­ey to qual­i­fy destruc­tive schemes for the bal­lot to keep it that way, while pock­et­ing the rest for him­self as profit.

Sec­ond, it results in an elec­torate more recep­tive to Eyman’s ini­tia­tives. If tax oblig­a­tions were fair in Wash­ing­ton and peo­ple were asked to pay accord­ing to their means, there would be less of an appetite for schemes to evis­cer­ate our com­mon wealth and wreck gov­ern­ment. Eyman’s fol­low­ers would still be enthu­si­as­tic, of course, but they’re only a frac­tion of the elec­torate. If Eyman can’t win at the bal­lot at least some of the time, his pow­er and influ­ence dis­ap­pears. He knows that.

That’s why Tim fears pro­gres­sive tax reform. It’s his worst night­mare. Were we to make our tax code fair­er, it’d be very bad for his busi­ness. He might even have to find a new (and pos­si­bly less lucra­tive) source of income.

Though Tim claims that Wash­ing­ton vot­ers are extreme­ly hos­tile to the idea of an income tax and would nev­er go for it, it still real­ly, real­ly, real­ly both­ers him when our state’s mass media give pro­gres­sives space to talk about the idea, because he fears the pos­si­bil­i­ty that we’ll be suc­cess­ful in edu­cat­ing the pub­lic about the mer­its of adopt­ing a state-lev­el tax that is based on abil­i­ty to pay.

Hence, Tim’s email this morning:

To:  Our thou­sands of sup­port­ers through­out the state (cc’d to the media, house & sen­ate mem­bers, and Governor)

From: Tim Eyman, Jack Fagan, & Mike Fagan [con­tact info redacted]

RE: “Tim Eyman wrecked the state gov­ern­men­t’s abil­i­ty to man­age its busi­ness” says push­er of state income tax

There’s a huge push right now for the Leg­is­la­ture to impose a new state income tax (rea­son #1 that we make sure Ini­tia­tive 1366 pass­es in Novem­ber). A local lib­er­al colum­nist in today’s Everett Her­ald is sali­vat­ing over a new $5 bil­lion PER YEAR tax increase (to put a $5 bil­lion annu­al tax increase in per­spec­tive, he’d have to raise the statewide sales tax to 15% to get that kind of money).

He writes:  “You can’t just mid­dle through to get $5 bil­lion … it would be incred­i­bly easy to get this mon­ey, if we had the polit­i­cal lead­er­ship will­ing to do so … look across I‑405 to Red­mond or to the tony neigh­bor­hoods of Hunts Point and Med­i­na.  Note the new build­ings, new cars, new remod­els, new hous­es, and real­ize that is just the tip of the ice­berg of new income and wealth in our state.  The ben­e­fi­cia­ries, indeed the tak­ers, of this wealth … we don’t tax income at all.”

The col­umn Eyman is refer­ring to, which he does­n’t prop­er­ly cite, let alone both­er to link to, is this sen­si­ble piece from Eco­nom­ic Oppor­tu­ni­ty Insti­tute Exec­u­tive Direc­tor John Bur­bank (State income tax would fix school fund­ing and much more).

(The sub­ject line of Eyman’s email is not from John’s col­umn at all, by the way, but from an August 12th let­ter to the edi­tor of The Her­ald which Eyman does­n’t cite. This is par for the course; Eyman has always been slop­py with attribution. )

John’s premise is that we could prop­er­ly fund edu­ca­tion from preschool to col­lege if we levied a state income tax as the cen­ter­piece of a reform effort. From his op-ed:

How much rev­enue would a pro­gres­sive income tax pro­vide for pub­lic ser­vices? First exempt $50,000 of income. Then put in place effec­tive tax rates of 2 per­cent for a $100,000 house­hold, 3.5 per­cent for a $200,000 house­hold, 5 per­cent for a $500,000 house­hold, 6.25 per­cent for a mil­lion dol­lar house­hold, and 8.125 per­cent for a $2 mil­lion house­hold. That would raise $7.5 billion.

Now let’s do the math:

• $7.5 bil­lion in new revenue,
• Minus $3 bil­lion for K‑12 education,
• Minus $1.5 bil­lion for high­er edu­ca­tion tuition,
• Minus $500 mil­lion for ear­ly child­hood education.

That leaves $2.5 bil­lion on the table. With that, we could take a bite out of our regres­sive tax sys­tem by drop­ping the sales tax by 1.5 cents. That would cost about $1.5 bil­lion. And that leaves $1 bil­lion a year for oth­er pub­lic ser­vices and a reserve.

This is actu­al­ly a very mod­est pro­pos­al, which would raise bad­ly need­ed rev­enue for the state while eas­ing the state’s depen­den­cy on the sales tax. Low­er­ing the sales tax would reduce tax oblig­a­tions for Wash­ing­ton’s mid­dle and low income fam­i­lies, who again pay much more of their income in tax­es than wealthy fam­i­lies do.

Though John’s pro­pos­al would low­er the sales tax in 2017 by as much as Sce­nario 1 of Tim Eyman’s hostage-tak­ing I‑1366, Eyman did­n’t both­er to men­tion that aspect of it. Instead, he pro­ceed­ed to take great offense at the very pro­gres­sive, very sen­si­ble idea of ask­ing wealthy peo­ple to pay their fair share:

The lust, the envy, the wan­ton cov­et­ing of oth­ers’ pos­ses­sions ooz­ing from his col­umn feels incred­i­bly filthy and unseemly.

Just because some peo­ple have things they’ve earned does­n’t give oth­ers the right to take it.

There is no lust or wan­ton cov­et­ing in John’s col­umn. That’s whol­ly imag­ined on Tim’s part. What’s tru­ly filthy and unseem­ly are Tim’s destruc­tive ini­tia­tives and tox­ic pol­i­tics. Tim has some nerve call­ing some­body else’s writ­ing filthy, giv­en his pen­chant for pet­ty name call­ing and cir­cu­la­tion of dis­gust­ing memes.

In the por­tion of the col­umn that Tim excerpts and jeers at, John is allud­ing to the impor­tant truth that there are no self-made men or women in Amer­i­ca.

Every entre­pre­neur, every busi­nessper­son, every suc­cess­ful investor uses the pub­lic’s infra­struc­ture that the tax­pay­ers paid for to make their mon­ey, whether that’s the Inter­net, sea­ports and air­ports, the inter­state high­way sys­tem, research con­duct­ed by our pub­licly owned uni­ver­si­ties, or the courts (the vast major­i­ty of civ­il cas­es in our courts con­cern busi­ness dis­putes and cor­po­rate law).

With­out tax­es, we don’t get schools, police and fire pro­tec­tion, roads and tran­sit, or any of the oth­er pub­lic goods we use in our dai­ly lives. These are things we could­n’t afford as indi­vid­u­als. It is only by pool­ing our resources togeth­er as a peo­ple that we can afford them. It is patri­ot­ic to be a tax­pay­er and to pay one’s dues.

If nobody pays their dues, the vital pub­lic ser­vices that sup­port our econ­o­my col­lapse — and our econ­o­my goes with it.

Tim end­ed his email as he always does — by exhort­ing his sup­port­ers to give him more mon­ey. Suc­cess of his hostage-tak­ing I‑1366, he claimed, will shut down dis­cus­sion of a state income tax. As Eyman put it: “The over­whelm­ing pas­sage of Ini­tia­tive 1366 will be the best way to repu­di­ate this kind of talk.”

So much for free speech.

I have no doubt that Tim will soon end up read­ing this blog post, so I’ll just address him direct­ly with a few clos­ing remarks.

Lis­ten, Tim, the same First Amend­ment that gives you the right to spew your garbage gives us the right to talk about mak­ing our state a bet­ter place to live, work, play, and go on vaca­tion. We’re not going to stop talk­ing about pro­gres­sive tax reform, no mat­ter what hap­pens with your hostage-tak­ing I‑1366. We’re not going to stop lay­ing the ground­work for action, either.

In fact, your attack on John Bur­bank’s op-ed mere­ly rein­forces our moti­va­tion to help ensure the con­ver­sa­tion about pro­gres­sive tax reform expands to become more preva­lent and inclu­sive in the years ahead.

Your ini­tia­tives are all about pro­tect­ing the rich from hav­ing to pay their fair share and keep­ing our tax code bro­ken so there will always be grist for future schemes to harm the gov­ern­ment that belongs to all of us as a peo­ple. You claim to be a cham­pi­on of the com­mon man, but that is a com­plete crock, as any­one can see from look­ing at the PDC reports of your ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry’s many com­mit­tees.

You’re relent­less, to be sure, but so are we. NPI just cel­e­brat­ed twelve years of con­tin­u­ous oper­a­tion and devel­op­ment. We’re here for the long haul, and we will not only main­tain our per­ma­nent defense against your ini­tia­tive fac­to­ry, but work ener­get­i­cal­ly to reform the bro­ken tax code that facil­i­tates its existence.