Congressman Cory Gardner and Sen. Mark Udall are deadlocked in one of the closest and most expensive U.S. Senate races in America. The candidates are trying to woo voters or attack their opponent on issues from green energy to reproductive choice to Obamacare. But there is one issue on people’s minds that has largely been ignored: taxes.
Colorado voters are deeply concerned about the fact that corporations and the wealthy use tax loopholes and deceptive accounting methods to avoid paying their fair share. A recent survey by Public Policy Polling (for ProgressNow Colorado and Americans for Tax Fairness Action Fund) reveals that Coloradans want change. By an overwhelming 5-to-1 margin, 79 percent to 15 percent, voters said they are more likely to vote for “a candidate who wants to close tax loopholes and use that money to create jobs by improving our roads, bridges and schools.”
The poll shows broad support for tax fairness issues — from conservatives and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, men and women, people of different ethnic backgrounds, and voters in different age and income brackets.
Coloradans are delivering a mandate to the candidates. By almost four-to-one, voters say they would support a “candidate who wants to close loopholes to make sure millionaires do not pay a lower tax rate than the middle class.”
Two out of three Coloradans oppose the corporate accounting trick by which Burger King and other companies renounce their U.S. “citizenship” to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
Coloradans feel stronger about these tax fairness issues than many of the other issues the candidates are talking about. Why is that? We think because voters are feeling squeezed, and these are issues they feel in their pocketbooks on a daily basis. They see the tax system as a manifestation of some of the larger problems our county is facing. Voters rightly understand that the deck is stacked against them in many ways.
The middle class effectively hasn’t had a pay raise in decades, while all the income gains have gone to the top 1 percent. Yet many of those millionaires and billionaires pay a lower tax rate than the teachers who educate their kids. Hugely profitable corporations like General Electric, Verizon, Boeing and 23 other corporations made billions of dollars in profits over the past five years but paid nothing in taxes. You likely paid more than any one of them did.
So how do the two candidates compare with voters’ views on these issues?
In each of the last few years, Rep. Gardner voted for the budget blueprint put forward by House Republican leaders and Rep. Paul Ryan. Each budget would have slashed tax rates for the wealthiest Americans by about one-third — which would save millionaires $400,000 a year on average. Corporate tax rates would have plummeted from 35 percent to 25 percent . Sen. Udall voted against this legislation.
These were needlessly partisan votes on an issue — tax fairness — that voters do not see as partisan.
Colorado voters overwhelmingly want a fairer tax system. The candidate who pledges to fight for one stands to gain in a Senate race that has been in a virtual dead heat.
Amy Runyon-Harms is executive director of ProgressNow Colorado. Ali Cochran is regional director of Fair Share.
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