According to David Crowley, one of his biggest accomplishments as Milwaukee County Executive, was nearly doubling the local sales tax to 0.9%. He’s so proud of it in fact he celebrated it’s passage by cutting a cake.
The problem is higher sales taxes disproportionally harm lower income families.
Just ask Joel Brennan, former Democratic gubernatorial candidate and former Department of Administration Secretary under Governor Evers. Earlier this week Brennan wrote an op-ed for the Journal Sentinel about Congressman Tom Tiffany’s plans to lower income taxes.
So the question to Crowley’s supporters is, which is it? Are sales tax increases something to celebrate with cake? Or going to cause working families to get crushed?
In it, he decried the thought that eliminating the income tax could lead to a higher sales tax, which is of course not how dynamic economic policy works, and how that higher sales tax would mean that “working families get crushed” and “the families on the tightest budgets would feel it first”.
But Brennan has never called out Crowley’s push for and celebration of rising the Milwaukee County sales tax. Because when it’s your own team pushing for regressive tax increases, that’s ok.
Interestingly, Crowley took his regressive policies even further this week when he said during the gubernatorial debate that he was “open” to toll roads. Tolls, much like sales taxes, hit working families first, making it more expensive to travel to and from work, to school, and to visit family.
So the question to Crowley’s supporters is, which is it? Are sales tax increases something to celebrate with cake? Or going to cause working families to get crushed?
