Advertisement

Radical GOP Platform Calls For Constitutional Amendment To Make Tax Increases Virtually Impossible

The Republican Party spent all day Tuesday debating and drafting the party’s official platform, and by the end of the day, it approved a draft of the “most conservative platform in modern history.” After enshrining its support for radical immigration, abortion, and women’s health laws, the GOP made sure to include support for a provision that would make it virtually impossible for the federal government to raise taxes in the future:

“We call for a Constitutional amendment requiring a super-majority for any tax increase with exceptions for only war and national emergencies, and imposing a cap limiting spending to historical average percentage of GDP so that future Congresses cannot balance the budget by raising taxes.”

Requiring a 60-vote supermajority to raise taxes would make doing so virtually impossible, as the GOP’s repeated use of the filibuster in the Democratic-controlled Senate has made painfully evident. States that require a supermajority to raise taxes, like California, have created a fiscal disaster, and such a plan ignores a broad consensus among economists that tax increases, as well as spending cuts, will be necessary to reduce the nation’s debt and eventually balance its budget.

The supermajority requirement isn’t the only destructive part of the platform proposal, which is similar to the Balanced Budget Amendment the GOP pushed during the debt ceiling debate last year. That plan, according to studies, would have doubled the nation’s unemployment rate, put 15 million people out of work, and required spending cuts that would destroy the social safety net.

Advertisement

As for the idea that the GOP would contemplate raising taxes to pay for war, that too is ludicrous. A decade ago, the GOP took control of both sides of Congress and the White House and inherited a budget surplus. The party promptly passed massive tax cuts immediately before putting two wars on the nation’s credit card, creating the train wreck that is America’s fiscal situation right now.

Republicans have spent the last three years promising to reduce the debt and create jobs. This policy, like the party’s budget and its “job creation” policies, proves the party isn’t capable of addressing either.