Welcome to the Golden Age of Dumb, Bespoke Tax Policy
Trump perfected it. And now Democrats are getting in on the act.
EVERY TIME REP. JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-N.J.) lands at Newark Airport, he gets mad. Not about how filthy the terminals are, or those dumb Uber airport surcharges, or even the notoriously pricey meals. No, what inspires the congressman’s wrath is all the pro–New York merch on display.
“Nothing pisses me off more than when I get off an airplane here at Newark . . . and in my face is often a row of shirts in a store screaming, ‘I Love New York.’ Really? We just landed in Jersey,” Gottheimer said Monday.
For Gottheimer, seeing promos for the other side of the Hudson is an intolerable burden. As are the many “I❤️NY” hats and snowglobes at the nearby Jon Bon Jovi rest-stop. (“Makes me want to spit out my coffee,” he said.) But Gottheimer has a solution: a new tax break. The congressman has proposed the “Jersey Pride Tax Credit,” a 25 percent tax credit for businesses that sell New Jersey–branded products in airports, train stations, and rest stops.
New Jersey often has a strange way of showing state pride.1 But in this case, Gottheimer is no oddity. The new fad among Democrats all over the country is trying to win over voters with bizarrely niche, costly, and sometimes regressive tax breaks.
Some are being introduced at the state level, others at the federal. For example, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Keisha Lance Bottoms wants to eliminate income taxes for teachers. Meanwhile Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D-WA) wants to exempt cops from federal income taxes on the first $100,000 of their income.
In other words, via the tax code, Dems have sought out a thousand and one little voter payoffs.
Well, actually, some of them aren’t so little: Sen. Cory Booker’s “Keep Your Pay Act” would eliminate all federal taxes on married-couple households making up to $75,000. Meanwhile, another potential 2028 hopeful, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), has collaborated with several Senate colleagues (including Booker!) on a bill that would eliminate federal income taxes on households earning up to $92,000. This would mean wiping out all income tax obligations for about 60 percent of households, according to calculations done for me by both the Penn Wharton Budget Model and the Yale Budget Lab.2
Not to be outbid, California gubernatorial candidate, Democrat Katie Porter, said she would exempt families’ first $100,000 from (state) income taxes if elected.
The bespoke tax-break trend among Democrats is a shift from the days when the party was more inclined to emphasize funding ambitious domestic programs with robust, broader-based tax increases. And it is proof that…