COMMENTARY Republicans Let Poor Folks Down

Today’s column is a message to all working or nonworking people who voted Republican last year because it looked to you like Republicans were the best bets to go to Little Rock and lighten your tax load and help preserve your job or create you one.

Here’s the message: Republicans in the state House of Representatives, with a help of a few Democrats, let you down last week.

They passed a big unaffordable tax cut providing a benefit accruing to a very elite few, but not to you.

It was to eliminate altogether the tax now paid on capital gains by people selling land or businesses - in other words, those prosperous enough to possess land or a business to sell.

Why, that’s a solid2 percent of the state’s population in the usual year.

You have a big landholder who sells tracts and gets to keep the percentage of his proceeds that otherwise would go to the state. So is he going to take this extra loot and look around for a way to provide you a job?

Or let’s say a guy sells a business that employs you.

Is the new owner certain to keep you around or might he be looking to cut operating costs to start getting his money back? Is the guy who just sold your company going to take his extra tax savings and find you a new job? Or might he have moved to Florida already because there is no income tax there?

Let us be fair andmeasured. Let us not say outright that there is no way this capital gains tax elimination will create jobs.

Let us just say only that the prospect is as iffy as all getout.

And get a load of this: This tax cut, the professional estimators say, might take tens of millions of dollars out of the state treasury. So state government might have to freeze hiring or reduce the work force by attrition.

Keeping in mind that a state job is a job, too, and that a state employee is a human being, too, then we can say that it is conceivable this capital gains elimination would be a job killer.

Some landowner might be on vacation in Tuscany next year with his tax savings while we’re all standing in line at the unemployment office, which is understaffed, making our lines longer.

I am wagering that this is not what you meant to vote for.

In fact, I am told that a feasible negotiation may be in the works by which Gov.

Mike Beebe will agree to three tax-cut bills totalingabout $15 million annually that are actually designed to help the working poor or conceivably stimulate employment.

Those would be a reduction in the sales tax on used cars, a reduction in the sales tax that manufacturers pay on utility costs and an expansion of an already existing income tax benefit for low-income filers.

Perhaps you recall that the governor has been insisting there was no room in his proposed state budget for any tax cut other than his half-cent reduction in the sales tax on groceries.

Actually, though, there might have been a little flexibility built into this line that he so boldly drew, maybe about $15 million worth, just in case he confronted this very eventuality - needing to give up a little something manageable to avoid having something as nutty as this capital gains measure forced on him, and us.

JOHN BRUMMETT IS A COLUMNIST FOR THE ARKANSAS NEWS BUREAU IN LITTLE ROCK.