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March 24, 2011 06:34 PM UTC

Scott Tipton Giveth, and Taketh Away

  • 31 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Two recent stories about freshman Rep. Scott Tipton, considered the #1 takeout opportunity for Colorado Democrats in the upcoming 2012 elections, help summarize his looming problem. The first, last week, is a laughably fluffy piece in the Durango Herald, authored by an intern, about Tipton’s proposal to slash corporate and capital gains tax rates to 10%:

Rep. Scott Tipton is pushing forward on his campaign promise to turn the economy around by introducing legislation on Tuesday that would cut the federal corporate income tax rate to 10 percent from 35 percent, a rate that is among the highest in the developed world.

Tipton, R-Cortez, said the bill – which would also lower capital-gains and dividends taxes to 10 percent – would attract business investment in the United States and spur job creation.

“In order to get this economy moving, we have to get Americans back to work,” he said in a phone interview. “We’ve been driving American jobs, American opportunities, off of our shores.”

The story is “backed” by anecdotes about historic corporate tax cuts spurring revenue growth, which isn’t itself a false statement–but Tipton’s proposal would slash these rates to a far greater extent than the historical examples cited, arguably shooting right past the potential positives of corporate tax relief and into unsustainable, irresponsible, full-on giveaway territory.

Which brings us to Tipton’s other problem, reported by Grand Junction’s KJCT-TV this week:

Cutting the budget at a national level could have an effect locally for some volunteer organizations. When the U.S. House voted to approve budget cuts, they put these nationwide programs in jeopardy.

Locally, the Foster Grandparent program, Senior Companion program, and the Retired an[d] Senior Volunteer program (RSVP) are at risk of being completely eliminated. The move could fire 450,000 volunteers and force senior citizens with medical problems to spend thousands of dollars to continue the care…

U.S. Representative Scott Tipton voted in favor of the cuts. His office told us that programs are being trimmed everywhere and that it is time to get serious. Unfortunately, he says, that means we’ll have to cut programs that a lot of people want to keep.

“The unfortunate reality of the situation is that we have to make some tough cuts if we are going to start to dig ourselves out of a $1.5 trillion deficit and $14.3 trillion in debt,” Tipton said in a statement to KJCT News 8.

In the first story, Scott Tipton wants to slash corporate taxes with the stated hope that doing so will increase revenue sometime in the future–based on examples that don’t speak to this much more radical proposal. In the other story, Tipton says it’s time to “get serious” about cutting senior programs, which would force “senior citizens with medical problems to spend thousands of dollars to continue the care.” Are those seniors supposed to wait for all that mythical new revenue to come pouring in? Perhaps some of them will die first and help “dig us out?”

Folks, if Democrats can’t turn these two narratives into one heartless corporate stooge who no responsible voter would support, they don’t know how to message anything…

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31 thoughts on “Scott Tipton Giveth, and Taketh Away”

  1. Bottom line his tax cut bill is simply a cover for his real objective – destroying the government. His tax cut will not produce any revenues immediately, if ever, and will only drive up the deficit to even higher levels.

    Republicans, including Rep. Tipton, are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand they say they support balancing the budget and then on the other they support tax cuts that will radically increase the deficit. When asked about this contradiction, their stock answer is the tax cuts will immediately stimulate huge new economic activity in the private sector, thus generating large increases in tax revenues and the deficit will no longer be a problem.  They say this even though there isn’t any evidence to support it. President Reagan tried this and it failed and deficits soared to all time highs at that time in the 1980’s.

    His position can only be characterized as  dodging the real and painful choices that need to be made both on the spending and revenue sides of the equation to balance the budget. This Republican subterfuge reminds me of MAD magazines Alfred E. Newman’s motto:

     

    What – me worry!

    We need serious people and proposals to deal with the structual deficit and the long term obligations of the federal government. Rep. Tipton’s proposals don`t fit the bill.

  2. that Dems have finally learned how to go on message offense.  In the past they have mainly gone into the old please don’t accuse me of being a commie class warrior defensive fetal position in the face of this kind of garbage.  Do think  Wisconsin, etc. may be opening some Dem eyes to the possibility of actually fighting back and openly supporting the middle class.

    Of course, no matter what the rate is, most corporations find ways not to pay it and have shown little interest in creating middle class jobs here in any case.

    Over and over we see deep government cuts costing jobs without the promised increased private sector activity creating more jobs and more revenue materializing.  Tipton and friends have wanted us not to believe our lying eyes and Dem pols have been scared to death to point out that the emperor wears no clothes. This has basically been going on since Reagan. If Dem pols and the public are learning anything it’s about time.

      1. understands an ideology or the talking points he parrots.  They are–if not simply meaningless red meat pablum: gut regulations, cut taxes, create jobs–then often simply wrong: Ritter/Salazar chased out energy firms (guess he hasn’t followed Weld County lately), and that his district has more ‘oil’ than Saudi Arabia.  

        Count me among the woefully unimpressed (not to mention he has quit posting where he is meeting with constituents when he is back in district, spending our dimes allegedly to talk with the people).  

  4. What messaging?  The Democratic Party in the 3rd CD has never gotten their act together and hired someone from the western slope who knows the western slope.  Individual candidate campaigns have from time to time but not the party.

      1. because he set himself up to be. There were many, many warning signs and if any of his staff read Pols they would have read urgings for him to get off his ass and get working.

        I think he just took it for granted. The most positive part of his campaign was a short video of him helping someone out of a ditch

      1. Those so-called pros still probably believe Salazar beat Walcher back in 2004 due to superior Democratic messaging and other nonsense.

        There was only one issue that mattered in that race and few people outside of the Western Slope and southern Colorado knew what it was.

              1. Walcher was a big proponent of Ref. A–the $2 billion ‘blank check’ for unspecified dams and siphons to take the Western Slope’s water to hose off driveways in Arvada.  

            2. I’d forgotten about that one.

              Ref A was Walcher’s doom.

              As for Salazar last year, with extremely few exceptions, he didn’t have an effective staff. I doubt he if he really knew how much trouble he was in until it was too late.

              There’s hope, though. If Tipton has a world-beating staff in the district, I’ve yet to see evidence of it.

        2. …but not a native, I will grant you that outsiders won’t know the issues.

          But they just might organize the itch out of all of us! They can come in, make phone calls, spend money on getting feet on the ground and voices on the phone!

          Because your feet and your voice will help your vote-button-pushing finger (and all the fingers of others roused to action) win the next election!

          1. Most of us (see 1,2,3) are sort of friendly (at least on occasion).  

            1 Club Twitty is not a fourth generation West Slopian, or a gas driller/coal miner, thus not truly ‘native.’

            2 Hell, Club Twitty is not a first generation West Slopite, thus everything s/he says is and should be suspect.

            3 There is no generation beyond eight or so–when I first moved here there was a sign at Escalante Canyon that noted the Dominguez-Escalante Expedition (circa 1776) ‘discovered’ those particular canyons, a surprised–no doubt–to the people that had been living there for many hundreds of years….

    3. Which might explain part of why they lost the 3rd CD.  The other part, of course, was Salazar parachuting in just for the Sentinel Editorial Board, and being pretty much MIA the rest of the time.

  5. Can’t message at all.  Obama did some good stuff in his campaign, his White House has been deplorable.  Colorado Democrats?  Not much of a chance.  Occasionally someone like Bennet falls into the right message, but not often.,

    I agree with the comment above that Third District Candidates need to hire Third District campaigners.  But, unfortunately, unless the candidate is committed to listening to his local advisors, the Washington types who will be foist on the campaign in  exchange for the money will overrule everything.  They have no idea about Colorado and especially the West Slope.  They might as well be from Mars and speak Klingon.  I’ve seen this happen on both sides of the aisle, and the results are not pretty.

        1. In 2008 we sold give us a majority and we will get things turned around.

          But in 2010 the message was no we haven’t fixed the big problems, but the Republicans will make things worse.

          We went from selling improvement to selling being the lesser of two evils.

          1. We had technical majorities in all three branches; someone obviously decided that rather than upset our more timid centrists or do the hard work of explaining the problems it was better to remind voters why they elected Democrats in 2008.  (And yes, a good part of 2008 was “we’re not the Republicans”.)

  6. damn much in taxes:

    How G.E. made $5.1 billion in the U.S. tax-free

    General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010.

    The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

    Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42…

    WTF, WTF, WTF???????

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