It’s been a tough year in the Mississippi legislature for Conservatives. We started this year being hopeful that real conservative legislation like a full personal income tax elimination bill would be passed into law.
But in the moderate at best MS Legislature, hoping for a full income tax elimination was apparently a pipe dream. On Wednesday of this week, a proposed bill that would have taken steps towards a complete personal income tax elimination in the state was discussed in the MS House of Representatives among the Republicans in Caucus meetings, and it was Republicans, not Democrats, that fought the bill to its ultimate demise.
The bill would have required a 3/5 majority vote for passage, meaning all Republicans in the MS House of Representatives would need to vote in favor of the bill for it to pass. Surely no Republican would fight against a tax cut, right?
The MS GOP’s platform states in clear language that we should support the reduction of the tax burden for our citizens:
Mississippi Republicans believe that people, not the government, know best how to spend their own money. When people keep more of their hard-earned money, jobs and economic growth will flourish in the free market system.
Mississippi Republicans support the reduction of the tax burden on our citizens. We believe in the reduction of taxes to empower taxpayers, to create a more competitive environment for job creation, to incentivize work, entrepreneurship, and investment, and to prevent the excessive growth of government.
But it was a dozen Republicans’ betrayal of our Party’s platform of cutting taxes that killed the only chance of an income tax elimination bill this year. It’s apparent that at least a dozen Republicans in the MS House of Representatives are either unaware of their own party’s platform, or they are deliberately hostile to it.
