Budget & Tax

Free Market Friday: Fortune favors the bold

November 7, 2014

Michael Carnuccio

Oklahoma is moving forward with a plan, Gov. Mary Fallin said, that will chart a course toward the gradual elimination of the state income tax.

That was two years ago. Now that this week’s elections are behind us, it’s time to move forward with the plan.

It’s time to put an end to Oklahoma’s penalty on work – especially since our motto is “labor omnia vincit.” It’s time to gradually eliminate the state income tax.

Texas has no state income tax. Kansas is in the process of gradually eliminating theirs. Neither tax small business profits, enabling them to reinvest, create jobs and grow the local economy.

“Oklahoma doesn’t want to end up an income-tax sandwich,” Fallin has wisely noted.

Taxpayers should be encouraged by the re-election this week of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

When Walker took over in 2011, Philip Klein writes in The Washington Examiner, “he could have pursued the easy path, as Republicans often do – passing a few safe, small-bore policies without upsetting the established order.”

As we all know, that’s not what he did. He cut taxes and challenged big labor head-on. His re-election, Klein writes, “shows that with enough conviction and fortitude, limited-government reforms can be instituted in hostile environments and still translate into political success.”

This brings us to Kansas. Our friends on the left have been reminding us for months that the gubernatorial race there was a referendum on Gov. Sam Brownback’s economic policies, particularly his plan for the gradual elimination of the state income tax.

They’re right. Like Walker, Brownback has shown what leadership looks like.

Fittingly, the Forbes online thought for the day on the morning following the 2014 wave election, was “The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.”

Fallin knows this, as she has had a hand in helping to enact two of Oklahoma’s most significant policy reforms in decades – casting the tie-breaking vote to move right to work forward and signing transformational workers’ compensation reform into law.

The third pillar of the Republican economic agenda, set forth in 1994 when she made history as Oklahoma’s first female lieutenant governor, is now within her grasp. Audentes fortuna juvat.