A Republican Governor just defied his own party’s tax bill with bold action

How bad is the new Republican tax bill? So bad that the Republican Governor of Maryland, Larry Hogan, is proposing a bill to his state’s General Assembly to keep his state’s residents from being “negatively affected” by it, according to an article in The Baltimore Sun today.

“Our goal will be to leave that money in the pockets of hardworking Marylanders,” Hogan said. “I am confident that our partners in the General Assembly who have expressed concern over the impact of this tax reform bill will support us unanimously in protecting Marylanders who could be negatively affected. Protecting taxpayers should be a bipartisan issue.”

The governor should have probably told that to his Republican cohorts in Congress before they passed the bill since it’s not just the people in Maryland who will be screwed over by this giveaway to the oligarchs. Nevertheless, Hogan called the proposed legislation his “holiday gift to the people of Maryland.”

Hogan’s announcement of the legislative proposal was light on details, but the gist of it is that he believes that the Republican tax scam will result in hundreds of millions of dollars in extra revenue to the state and that his proposal will give that additional money back to Maryland taxpayers who will be losing the current federal deductions for state and local income taxes and for property taxes under the new tax law.

Governor Hogan may be trying to help the people of Maryland with his legislation, but the fact that he recognizes that the bill will actually leave Marylanders with less money than before demonstrates the hypocrisy of Republicans who have been claiming that their plan was designed to help the middle class rather than the ultra-wealthy who are the most obvious beneficiaries of the provisions like the pass-through corporate tax rate that will put millions of more dollars in Donald Trump’s personal bank accounts.

To paraphrase the old saying, if it ain’t broke, you don’t need to fix it. If a Republican governor is saying it needs a fix to make the people of Maryland whole again, doesn’t that mean the bill is faulty by design? The Republican tax bill’s giveaway to the rich is a feature of the bill, not a fault. One Republican admits it. The rest are just massive liars.

Vinnie Longobardo

is the Managing Editor of Washington Press and a 35-year veteran of the TV, mobile, & internet industries, specializing in start-ups and the international media business. His passions are politics, music, and art.