RINO Alert: Missouri Senator Josh Hawley Wants Big Tax Increases on Working-Class Americans

Here are five grim – but uncontestable – facts about America’s dicey fiscal future.

1. The federal government’s budget is very large today and is expected to get much larger in the future.
2. Entitlement programs are the primary reason why federal spending is an ever-growing burden.
3. Failure to control spending and reform entitlements eventually will mean a major fiscal crisis.
4. That fiscal crisis will lead to some benefit reductions, but the main response will be massive tax increases.
5. Since there are not enough rich people to finance big government, ordinary people will be plundered.

The last point deserves some elaboration, especially since my friends on the left claim that big government can be financed by soak-the-rich taxes.

The bottom line is that the math doesn’t work. There are not enough rich people. That’s apparent if you look at the numbers in Jessica Riedl’s chartbook.

But I think my 12th Theorem of Government is even more compelling.

Simply stated, politicians in other developed nations would have used class-warfare taxes is that was a realistic way to finance a big welfare state.

But that’s not the case, which is why every single European welfare state imposes huge tax burdens on lower-income and middle-class people.

Every. Single. One.

I’m providing this background because it will help to show why Senator Josh Hawley, a supposed Republican from Missouri, is being dishonest in his recent New York Times column about Medicaid.

He’s portraying himself as a defender of ordinary people, yet his head-in-the-sand approach to entitlements is a recipe for massive tax hikes on the people he claims to be defending.

Here are some excerpts from his embarrassing piece.

Will Republicans be a majority party of working people…? Mr. Trump has promised working-class tax cuts and protection for working-class social insurance, such as Medicaid. But now…the party’s Wall Street wing…is urging Congress…deep cuts to social insurance. …that argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal. …Missouri…is one of 40 Medicaid expansion states…voters mandated that the state expand Medicaid… Mr. Trump himself has been crystal clear on this point. Since taking office he has repeatedly rejected calls for Medicaid benefit cuts. …Republicans in Congress should pay attention. Our voters not only want us to protect the social insurance…they also want us to fight…for a better economy.

There are two primary responses to Hawley’s nonsensical column.

• First, Hawley trumpets “working-class tax cuts,” but all the European evidence shows these are the people who suffer the most when the time comes to finance the bigger welfare state than the Missouri Senator supports.
• Second, Hawley say Republican should fight “for a better economy,” but he conveniently fails to explain how that will happen when all the evidence shows that the European welfare state has led to much lower living standards.

Those two arguments are a slam-dunk case against Hawley’s big-government approach. However, there are five additional flaws that should be noted.

1. Medicaid is not social insurance. It is not a taxes-in, benefits-out program like Medicare or Social Security. It is a welfare program.
2. Since a heavy majority of recipients live off of government, it is not a program for “working people,” as Hawley monotonously asserts.
3. Missouri voters expanded Medicaid because Obamacare bribes states by having the federal government pay 90 percent of expenses.
4. Hawley is using the dishonest definition of a spending cut. The proposals that he’s upset about merely slow the growth of Medicaid.
5. Last but not least, Hawley asserts Medicaid reform is “politically suicidal” even though a bolder reform in the 1990s was very popular.

What’s sad is that I’m 99.99 percent confident that Hawley and his staff know he is being dishonest. Yet he has decided that personal ambition (he wants to run for president in the future) is more important than the nation’s future.

Let’s hope his more honest and more ethical colleagues ignore his desperate pandering for votes.

Let’s close by noting that a big benefit of having a medium-sized welfare state (rather than a European-style large-sized welfare state) is that working class voters in America pay very little tax.

Josh Hawley won’t admit it, but he wants those workers to be like their overtaxed and lower-paid European counterparts.

P.S. Hawley also sides with the left on other issues, such as price controls and stock buybacks.

P.P.S. While Hawley is dishonest, the good news (sort of) is that there are some decent folks on the left who openly admit a big welfare state means big taxes on ordinary people.

I even include them on my page of “honest leftists.” Maybe I should also have a page for “dishonest, make-believe conservatives.”