(Minneapolis) — The Freedom Foundation of Minnesota today announced the release of a new policy report, Analysis of Governor Dayton’s Tax Plan. The report finds that Governor Dayton’s proposed tax increases could cause over 35,000 job losses.
“Tax Day is the perfect day to illustrate how raising taxes will harm Minnesota’s slowly rebounding economy,” said Annette Meeks, CEO of the Freedom Foundation of Minnesota.
Governor Dayton’s proposed budget would increase spending by a staggering 7.6 percent in the upcoming biennium (FY 2014-15) for a total of $37.94 billion. This represents a $2.5 billion dollar spending increase over the current biennium and almost $1.2 billion above and beyond what the state had been forecast to spend. Worse yet, it projects another massive spending increase of 7.4 percent in the following biennium (FY 2016-17).
“This level of spending shines a bright light on one of the fundamental problems with Governor Dayton’s budget proposal,” said Meeks. “It is not merely a one-time boost in spending, but rather a new baseline that puts the state even further down the path to unmanageable and unaffordable future spending increases.”
Meeks continued: “In short, Governor Dayton wants to fund his super-sized state budget with needless tax increases, including regressive cigarette taxes and a new top personal income tax rate on Minnesota families and job creators. The result of these tax hikes will be a less competitive and less prosperous state economy, unsuited to compete with other states for jobs and investment.”
