Blackburn, Bredesen at odds over Tennessee income tax
When U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn launched her campaign for the U.S. Senate last October, she touted what she says is among her biggest accomplishments: fighting a proposed state income tax.
In a nearly three-minute campaign video, in which Blackburn calls herself a “hardcore, card-carrying conservative” who is proud of being politically incorrect, she noted her opposition to the income tax.
“Here in Tennessee, I fought my own party to stop a massive, job-killing state income tax,” she said. “We won.”
The state income tax issue has come up throughout the U.S. Senate race, including during a debate between Blackburn and her opponent, Democratic nominee Phil Bredesen.
Bredesen has responded to Blackburn’s claims about the income tax fight by saying although she protested, he governed.
The divergent views on the issue are symbolic of the race.
Blackburn, who says the Senate is dysfunctional, has vowed to bring her at-times combative style to the chamber in an effort to whip those lawmakers into shape, with a focus on repealing the Affordable Care Act.
Bredesen, who has made overtures to reach across the aisle, has vowed to be the adult in the room who isn’t afraid of tackling difficult issues in a bipartisan manner that may frustrate members of his own party.
AN ‘UNPROVEN
LIBERAL SCHEME’
Among the only areas of agreement between Bredesen and Blackburn on the state income tax is where the issue began.
The two candidates concede the discussion of an income tax started in the mid-1990s, when Tennessee began to experience budget problems due to rising health care costs.
Over the course of several years, then-Gov. Don Sundquist, a Republican, looked for alternative sources of revenue for the state, including implementing an income tax.
During his 2000 State of the State speech, Sundquist outlined his vision for the state’s budget, which partially relied on an income tax.
“Many have pronounced my vision for the future dead on arrival,” he said at the time. “I refuse to accept that pronouncement.”
The Tennessean reported at the time that “most lawmakers said an income tax is already dead.” Responding to Sundquist’s proposal, Blackburn unsuccessfully sponsored a bill aimed at creating a committee to study government spending and reforms. When lawmakers approved the budget in June, it did not ultimately include Sundquist’s income tax plan.
As such, the governor brought the idea back in 2001. Protesters, who the year before started driving around Legislative Plaza while honking their horns in protest of the proposal, continued to pressure lawmakers on the issue.
Blackburn, who previously served in the Sundquist administration, said his proposal was an “unproven liberal scheme.”
Her opposition to the income tax plan was so well known, supporters passed out “Marsha’s the Man!” bumper stickers.
In July 2001, The Tennessean reported a “shouting mob of more than 1,000 anti-tax protesters” flocked to the state Capitol, pounding on lawmakers’ doors — with someone even throwing a rock and breaking Sundquist’s office window.
The paper noted that Sundquist and “several senators” blamed Blackburn and talk radio show hosts for encouraging the protesters to demonstrate.
But Blackburn denied responsibility, saying, “It’s unfortunate it got out of hand.”
Today, Blackburn has a wistful view of the multi-year pushback against the income tax proposal.
“It turned out that I was the first one to say publicly I was going to oppose it. I ended up basically leading the opposition to it and that turned out to be about a four-year process of leading that opposition,” she said, while also giving credit to conservative talk radio show hosts including Phil Valentine, Steve Gill, Ben Cunningham and Hallerin Hill.
“To this day I still meet people around the state who express their displeasure with the imposition of a state income tax,” she said.
Despite her opposition to Sundquist’s income tax proposal, it doesn’t appear to have damaged their relationship. In April, the former governor endorsed Blackburn’s Senate bid.
She says while she disagreed with the policy of a state income tax, her opposition was never personal.
“When you’re discussing public policy, I think that having respectful disagreement is something that’s always going to be important. It’s something that I have always done,” she said. “I am really honored to have Gov. Sundquist’s endorsement.”
ACROSS-THE-BOARD CUTS
Bredesen says the fight over the income tax is partially responsible for his successful run for governor in 2002.
Although he doesn’t quibble that Blackburn made her name from being part of the income tax protests, Bredesen says his opponent glosses over the fact that the proposal was “deeply unpopular on day one.”
“This was not exactly a case of taking a principled stand that went against the grain or anything. She jumped out in front of a bandwagon that was already moving along very, very well and used it,” Bredesen said.
The former Democratic governor also criticized Blackburn for not coming up with any ideas on how to address the state’s fiscal issues.
“It was just no, no, no on the income tax, which — that’s fine but there still is a problem there that has to be solved and my respect goes a lot more to people who don’t just say no,” he said.
Blackburn disagrees with that assessment, saying that she proposed what was called the “5 percent solution” which relied on across-theboard spending cuts.
“Gov. Bredesen eventually used that 5 percent solution and did across-the-board cuts when he went into office. I think it’s important if you’re going to say don’t tax that you talk about how you’re going to be responsibly reworking that state budget,” she said.
But that’s not how Bredesen remembers it. He said across-theboard spending cuts did not originate from Blackburn and cutting the budget was not a patentable idea.
“Corporations do it all the time. The hard part is not just having the idea of cutting across the board,” he said, the difficult challenge is determining exactly where to make cuts.
After vowing during his gubernatorial campaign to not push an income tax proposal, Bredesen says he never considered the idea. Instead, he says his administration made difficult moves, including the controversial decision to eliminate people from the state’s health care program.
THE INCOME TAX AS A MICROCOSM OF THE RACE
The income tax topic is symbolic of how combative the race has become in recent months.
At their Sept. 25 debate at Cumberland University, Blackburn said Tennessee is attracting people is because it does not have a state income tax.
“I led that fight when I was in the state Senate,” she said. “People around this state joined with me. We defeated that state income tax.”
Bredesen responded by saying he gave Blackburn “credit for organizing protests around the capitol when the income tax came up, but I’m the one who had to settle down and over the course of eight years make a whole bunch of difficult decisions to get us through very difficult years.”
Although she didn’t get a chance to respond to his remark, Blackburn later said in an interview that Bredesen’s comments at the debate were arrogant and condescending.
In a separate interview, Bredesen responded, “I certainly try hard to be respectful and not be condescending, but you can’t pound me on the subject forever and then if I say something, it’s condescending. That’s ridiculous. This is a political campaign.”