Labor & Employment Law

Oregon Voters Tell Corporations, Wealthy: ?Pay Your Fair Share?

By Mike Hall

Oregon voters, faced with a $727 million budget deficit that threatened severe cuts in education, health care, public safety and senior services, voted Tuesday for two “fair share” measures that raise taxes on the state’s wealthiest families and boost a minimum tax on businesses that had been set at just $10 since 1931.

Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain says the victory on both these measures “sends a strong message on how we value education and other vital working family services.”

Oregon unions, community allies and progressive groups led the fight against the deep-pocketed corporate community that preached economic doom if the tax measures passed. 

Both measures won handily?around 54 percent to 46 percent for each?at a time when right-wing pundits and anti-tax zealots claim voters are in revolt over taxes and government programs. The Ballot Initiative Strategy Center (BICS) says the vote is a “solid rejection of anti tax and anti-government activists”

trying to protect their narrow self interests at the expense of real solutions that will protect vital services, save jobs, and support the state economy.

The Oregon victory signals once again that these special interests remain out of sync with moderates and independents. Americans are looking for real solutions, not gimmicks and nay-saying, to solve real problems.

Measure 66 raises taxes on households with taxable income above $250,000, and Measure 67 increases the 79-year-old $10 a year minimum tax on businesses to $150. 

Katie Connolly on Newsweek’s The Gaggle blog writes: 

It’s extraordinarily refreshing news at a time when Americans appear to want government to solve major economic problems without spending any money, let alone asking the richest among us to lend a hand.

Oregon House Speaker Dave Hunt (D) puts it this way:

It means the February session won’t be focused on cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from schools, public safety and health care.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on January 28, 2010 (boomark / email).