VT Dems go full communist.

by Rob Roper

Vermont Democrats nominated Amanda Janoo as their horse to take on Phil Scott in November’s gubernatorial election, rejecting by a slim margin the putatively more moderate alternative, Aly Richards, and in doing so decided to go – as many in their party have – full-on communist.

Though Janoo doesn’t formally claim the Democratic Socialist party label – you know, the folks who want to “save our democracy” by abolishing the U.S. Senate, popular elections for president, and make the Supreme Court subordinate to the one remaining branch of government, the Politburo, er, House of Representatives, among many other even crazier proposals — she said in an interview with Seven Days, “I’m always quite pleased when people will relate me to [New York City Mayor Zohran] Mamdani. He’s given me a lot of hope in this moment. I feel like I’m part of that movement….”

So, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and is part of the movement to fly south with the flock, then, yeah, it’s a Democrat Socialist duck – with only a left wing. Add to the case Janoo’s campaign communications director is Jeffery Peterson, who is also running for a Burlington house seat with the endorsement of Green Mountain Democratic Socialist of America (Burlington Daily News).

According to that Seven Days interview, Janoo “has portrayed herself as a disruptor who believes in a more self-sufficient Vermont, in which the wealthy pay their fair share and decisions are made at the community level….” Which begs a few questions, the first being how does she define “wealthy,” the second being how does she define “fair share,” and another being what does she mean by “self-sufficient?” Replacing the three billion or so in federal funds Vermont gets with local tax dollars? That’ll be fun!

As for the first question, Janoo is specific. She would increase marginal income tax rates on households earning $250,000 to $499,999 by 2% to 10.75% and by a whopping 8% on household income over $500,000 to a national record-shattering 16.75%. The current top marginal income tax rate in the U.S. today is California at 13.3% on income over $1 million. Suffice to say, nobody with an income above the Janoo thresholds is going to stick around to be thus fiscally raped. Which gets us to the second question….

What exactly – and I mean exactly — is anyone’s “fair share?” Already – today (well, actually 2024, the latest year I could find numbers for) — before Janoo’s tax scheme has taken effect, there are only 4,451 returns showing $500,000 or more according to the Joint Fiscal Office (1.3 percent of resident filers, and most of these are one-time windfalls from things like selling a business or property). Combined they hold 18.8 percent of the state’s adjusted gross income (AGI) but pay 33 percent of total state income taxes, over $380 million in total. Isn’t that a fair share? Or, if we’re being fair, like TWICE their fair share? Especially since these people ponying up the big bucks to pay for the bulk of state programs probably aren’t the same folks benefiting by lining up for Section 8 housing or cashing in on an EBT card.

Add in the $250,000 to $499,999 filers and we’re looking at 6 percent of filers accounting for 46 percent of all income taxes collected. Six percent of the taxpayers paying nearly half the total tab. If that’s not paying “their fair share,” how much would it take to get Janoo and company to take their jackboots off the neck and call it enough? (I’m guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 percent, Stalin-style).

Now how many of those high earners like, for example, doctors (a little literary foreshadowing here) do you figure give Janoo the one fingered salute and leave because moving, say, the twenty miles from Woodstock to Hanover, New Hampshire, would save a $500,000 filer over $40,000 and a $1 million filer over $125,000 every year on income taxes alone, not to mention no sales tax and, and an (albeit slight) discount on property taxes. Ask yourself, if I were to offer you $75,000 a year tax free on top of your current take-home pay to move out of Vermont (and, no, I am not offering you this, we’re in the hypothetical here), would you take it? Yeah. Or if you ad the choice of giving your money to a bloated, inefficient, incompetent government bureaucracy or using it to pay your kid’s college tuition – in full. Again, yeah.

And here’s the kicker. What does Janoo want to spend this windfall of other people’s money on? The (or rather “a”) big one is Single Payer healthcare. A failed proposal that we know will fail again because it’s already failed once in Vermont because it’s too damned expensive and too damned complicated. And what’s the kicker to this kicker, the (over)estimated revenue from this ludicrously insane tax hike proposal ($220 million) doesn’t even cover her own estimated cost of just Phase One of Janoo’s healthcare plans, Universal Primary Care ($300-$320 million).

So, who do you think will end up footing the bill for that hundred-million-dollar gap, plus whatever all her other cockamaimy proposals will cost, along with all the revenue lost when the richies decide they might as well ditch slope-side at Stratton for the income-tax-free Nevada side of Lake Tahoe? Answer: YOU, middle- and lower-income working Vermonters! That’s who! Seriously, you’re better off responding to that email informing you that you somehow won the Ugandan lottery than you are voting for this woman.

Don’t believe me? You’ve been living under one of the most “progressive,” tax-the-rich state governments in the country with supermajorities of little Janoos in Montpelier promising you all the free stuff that the wealthy will pay for the last thirty years. How’s it working out?

Rob Roper is a freelance writer with 25 years of experience in Vermont politics including three years service as chair of the Vermont Republican Party and nine years as President of the Ethan Allen Institute, Vermont’s free market think tank.