Republicans Stay Silent as Braun Proposes $6.5 Billion in Tax Increases

It has now been one week since Mike Braun, the governor of the state of Indiana, came out and announced $6.5 billion in new tax increases. Now, like with so many other things, they don’t call them tax increases. They come up with fun little names for them. A lot of times it’s fees. This time it’s tolls. You guys remember last week the Braun administration came out and announced their plan to toll the entire stretch — more than 150 miles — of I-70 across the state of Indiana. For everyone. Whether you live in Indiana or not. Remember when they first started talking about tolling I-70? They said it would target truckers. They said it would hit people traveling through the state. The new plan hits everyone. Indiana resident or not. Car, SUV, or semi-trailer. And even people simply going to work. That’s the most egregious part of all of this for me. They are now proposing to tax people who are simply trying to go to work. If you work in the greater downtown Indianapolis area, there’s a good chance I-70 is part of your commute. We’ve talked many times about how the Republicans in Indiana — who control everything in our state government — are financial predators. They target the things you can’t avoid. They target the things you need to live. Look at the taxes that have gone up the most over the past decade. Property taxes. Because you have to have somewhere to live. The tax on gas. Because you have to be able to get to work. And if you bought an electric vehicle thinking you’d avoid that, they came for you too with new EV taxes, wheel taxes, license plate fees. All of it by design. The Republicans who control Indiana know you can’t escape those taxes. That’s why we call them predatory taxes. And why we call them financial predators. So it has now been a week since Mike Braun, the Republican governor of Indiana, proposed $6.5 billion in new taxes. The proposal would start in 2029. All of it pending federal approval, of course, because the Indiana General Assembly already gave away its authority over tolling last year when they handed it to the governor. They said at the time this was for the distant future. They said it wouldn’t happen right away. But Braun got the authority and immediately announced tolling. And here’s the remarkable part. Not one Republican in the Indiana House. Not one Republican in the Indiana Senate. Not a single statewide office holder — lieutenant governor, secretary of state, attorney general, comptroller — has said a word questioning it. Not one. No one has stood up and said, wait a second. Six-and-a-half billion dollars in tax increases from a Republican governor with Republican supermajorities? That seems a little out of line. What does that tell you about the Indiana Republican Party? It should tell you exactly what I’ve been saying for years. They are the party of high taxes and big government. Every time the Republicans need revenue, their default move is to charge you more. No matter what the issue is. This is the same conversation we were having almost ten years ago when Republicans passed the largest tax increase in Indiana history — the ten-cent-per-gallon gas tax increase that automatically rises every year. At the time we said the same thing. You’re not holding INDOT accountable. You’re not demanding better results. You’re just charging people more. Look at I-69. Billions of dollars spent. Massive projects everywhere. And yet we’re told there’s no money for basic necessities. How is that possible? And remember what we said back then: no matter how much money you give them, it will never solve the problem. Fast forward less than a decade. Where are we now? We’re being told there’s no money to maintain I-70 unless we raise taxes again. Does anyone really believe that if they collect the full $6.5 billion this will suddenly fix the roads? Does anyone actually have faith in INDOT based on its history? Based on the history of Indiana government? Based on the Pence and Holcomb administrations before Braun? Meanwhile, INDOT has canceled more than 300 road projects in the past year. Three hundred. And yet when the Chicago Bears might move to Indiana, suddenly they’re proposing to use money from the I-80 toll road to help fund a stadium. Wait a second. I thought there was no money for roads. So what’s the truth? It’s priorities. And the priority for the people running Indiana — the Republican leadership — is not you. It’s not your finances. It’s not your household budget. And it’s certainly not basic infrastructure. Their priority is collecting as much money as possible, using it for pet projects, and then telling you to be grateful. How many times have you heard the excuse? “Well, it could be worse. We could be Illinois.” That’s the go-to defense for bad government in Indiana. Not that they’re doing excellent work. Not that they’re good stewards of taxpayer money. Not that they’re being accountable or frugal. Just that it could be worse. Think about that. The Republican Party claims to stand for low taxes and limited government. That’s the party platform. And yet a week after the Republican governor proposed raising taxes by $6.5 billion — taxes that will disproportionately hit poor and middle-class people — nobody in their party says anything. I’ve seen some lawmakers do the predictable response: “Where would the money come from?” That’s their default answer. But where’s the lieutenant governor? Micah Beckwith campaigned on being a check and balance on Mike Braun. That’s why he was elected at the convention. So where is the check and balance now? Is Beckwith okay with $6.5 billion in new taxes hitting working-class people in Indiana? And remember, even the original argument about “getting the truckers” doesn’t hold up. Businesses don’t eat tax increases. They pass them on to you in the form of higher prices. Always. Meanwhile there is massive waste happening inside Indiana government that never gets addressed. Just last week we talked about Indiana Secretary of State Diego Morales wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars on vehicle history reports that hardly anyone used. Over $100,000 wasted. Not in the sense of we didn’t get our money’s worth. We got nothing for it. How many examples like that do you think exist in state government that never get reported on? How much waste is there that never gets exposed? And yet the answer from the governor is to raise taxes again. Remember last year when taxes were raised by $1 billion because we were told there was no money? Then the revenue projections came in higher than expected. Did anyone get their billion dollars back? Did the state say, oops, we made a mistake, here’s your money? Of course not. They just kept it. And if you think $6.5 billion in tolls is going to suddenly turn I-70 into a masterpiece of infrastructure, you’re dreaming. I think about the years I used to drive I-70 every day. For nine years I used that road. Probably eight or nine miles each way. Sixteen miles total per day. At ten cents per mile that would have been about $1.60 per day. Roughly eight dollars a week. Over a year, that’s about $400. Four hundred dollars a year. That’s what my taxes would have gone up just to drive to work. And think about the cycle here. You’re taxed to drive to work so you can earn income. Then that income is taxed. Then the things you buy with that income are taxed again. Have you ever thought about that cycle? Everything is taxed. Over and over and over. And yet we’re constantly told there’s never enough money. How is that possible? The answer is simple. We don’t have a revenue problem. We have an allocation of resources problem. We’re spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on vehicle history reports nobody uses. But we’re told we don’t have money for the roads people use every single day to earn a living. It’s not a revenue problem. It’s an allocation of resources problem.