Here & Now

Frederica Freyberg:

But first the guest the Tommy Thompson campaign sent our way, Steve Baas. He’s the VP of governmental affairs at the metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. Thanks a lot for being here.

Steve Baas:

Great to be here, Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, one true line in Adam’s segment, hearing from business owners, was how consumers just don’t have the money to spend. Is that, in your mind, the place to start to try to boost the economy and jobs? Kind of, getting more money into people’s pockets?

Steve Baas:

I think that’s one of the reasons you’ve seen such an emphasis traditionally from Governor Thompson and other candidates in his party on reducing the tax burden on families, on middle class families, so they have more spending power. They believe strongly that consumers, if given the power and the resources to spend, will fuel this economy and they’ll make better decisions about how to spend their money than government will do for them if they take that spending power away via taxation.

Frederica Freyberg:

So specifically on Tommy Thompson’s part, what would that tax reduction look like?

Steve Baas:

I think you’re going to want to listen to the governor himself on that, but I think what we can do is we can look in his record on what sort of things he might do. You know, when he was governor of Wisconsin, he cut the income tax rate three different times. He cut taxes across the board 91 different times as governor of Wisconsin. This is a governor, a candidate, who as governor of this state, really put an emphasis on putting money back in the pockets of consumers via tax cuts and it worked. On Governor Thompson’s watch, the economy boomed. We created almost 75 million new jobs here in Wisconsin. So I think if you want to see what the future might look under a Senator Thompson, you should look at the past under a Governor Thompson.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about growing manufacturing jobs, the kind of jobs we think of as really good-paying?

Steve Baas:

I think there’s really no difference in the philosophy when you’re looking at different types of jobs. Manufacturing jobs need confidence and a climate that’s conducive to growth. And I think when you have a senator who acts like Governor Thompson did, in terms of putting money back in the pockets of consumers, in terms of looking at smart regulation for government, not onerous regulation, looking for ways that we can work together to grow markets and grow the economies, that’s the sort of stuff that restores confidence in our manufacturing base, in our economy. And, again, you don’t have to look that far back in our history to see that in action from Tommy Thompson.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, one of the things I know that Tommy Thompson talks about doing is something called border adjusting on taxes, and that would basically get rid of the export tax to boost manufacturing. But if you do that kind of thing and you kind of reduce the tax burden to put more money in people’s pockets, how do you make up for revenues lost through these tax cuts, and then deal with the deficit?

Steve Baas:

I think the fallacy that people fall into when they criticize proposals like that is they view tax policy as a zero-sum game, and that if you give a tax benefit to one group, it necessarily comes out of the pocket of another group, and that we have a fixed pie economically in terms of our wealth and our growth. What Governor Thompson believes, and what we believe as an entrepreneurial association at the MMAC, is that you grow that pie by incenting growth. It’s not a zero-sum game. If you make it easier for manufacturers to move their goods and create new markets for them, you grow the size of the pie and everybody benefits. You’re not taking from one to give to another. You’re making everybody benefit.

Frederica Freyberg:

Steve Baas, thanks very much for your words.

Steve Baas:

Thank you, Fred.