Real estate mogul Donald Trump continues to reveal his true leftist colors, smearing Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) for being too conservative.
After Walker endorsed Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Trump unleashed a barrage of leftist talking points against Walker.
"There’s a $2.2 billion deficit and the schools were going begging and everything was going begging because he didn’t want to raise taxes ’cause he was going to run for president," Trump said. "So instead of raising taxes, he cut back on schools, he cut back on highways, he cut back on a lot of things."
Townhall's Guy Benson points out that Trump had previously leveled this smear towards Walker in September, even though The Washington Post, PolitiFact and FactCheck.org – all of which are leftist fact-checkers – all discredited the attack. Wisconsin had a projected $2.2 billion deficit at one point in 2014, but there was never an actual deficit since state law requires the budget to be balanced, which is what Walker did. Radio host Charlie Sykes confronted Trump on his lie, and Trump put the onus on Time Magazine, even though the magazine got the number from Trump himself.
But what's even more disturbing is that Trump's criticism of Walker suggests that Trump's first instinct is to raise taxes to balance the budget rather than conservative spending, which used to be a cardinal sin in Republican primaries. It's also bad economics, as economist Thomas Sowell explains:
In 1920, when the top tax rate was 73 percent, for people making over $100,000 a year, the federal government collected just over $700 million in income taxes-- and 30 percent of that was paid by people making over $100,000. After a series of tax cuts brought the top rate down to 24 percent, the federal government collected more than a billion dollars in income tax revenue-- and people making over $100,000 a year now paid 65 percent of the taxes.
How could that be? The answer is simple: People behave differently when tax rates are high as compared to when they are low. With low tax rates, they take their money out of tax shelters and put it to work in the economy, benefitting themselves, the economy and government, which collects more money in taxes because incomes rise.
High tax rates which very few people are actually paying, because of tax shelters, do not bring in as much revenue as lower tax rates that people are paying. It was much the same story after tax cuts during the Kennedy administration, the Reagan administration and the Bush Administration.
With conservatives growing increasingly distrustful of Trump, this smear against Walker will only continue to drive a wedge between Trump and conservatives going forward.
