Democrat congressional candidate and criminal defense lawyer Kyrsten Sinema served for six years in the State House under Republican control, and one year in the State Senate under Republican control. She complained throughout those years that Arizona families were undertaxed. She even called Arizona “our tax-starved state.” Fortunately, Republicans would not let tax increase bills be voted on during her years in office, denying her a chance to raise your taxes. (Now, like a guy who kills his parents then pleads for mercy as an orphan, Sinema boasts she did not vote for tax increases, after complaining for years that the GOP would not act on her tax increase demands!) She must think Arizona voters are stupid … or perhaps leeches. Let’s look at her own words.

Here is Sinema’s state tax increase plan as provided to the Arizona Republic. Note that each one of her ideas would devastate entire sectors of the state’s economy:

[R]aising taxes is more economically sound than cutting vital social services …. In Arizona, there are a number of techniques that we could use …. Broadening the sales tax to include services, closing exemptions on sales tax items, reinstating the state property tax, and eliminating tax credits are just some of the strategies to create a more broad revenue stream to fund Arizona’s important programs. I do not support irresponsible pledges to “not raise taxes” … our tax-starved state relies on.
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We are a starved budget in a recession…. As mentioned above, I advocate broadening the sales tax to include taxing personal and business services, such as telemarketing, auto repair, and hair and manicure services. This alone would generate roughly $565 million to the state budget per year. I support restoring the sales tax to items currently exempted, such as health club memberships. By restoring the sales tax by closing these exemptions, the state’s revenue would increase about $1.4 billion per year. I support expanding the sales tax to include Internet sales…. I advocate eliminating tax credits such as the education tax credit … and the enterprise zone tax credit.

Wow: by her own calculations, in a failing economy, she is demanding $2 BILLION annually in new state taxes, and that’s not even counting her plan to reinstate the state property tax. She is virtually alone in America in calling for tax increases during a recession.

Separately, she promised to “greatly increase” capital gains taxes on families and “greatly increase” corporate taxes. ["Kyrsten Sinema – Political Positions,” Project Vote Smart 2006.] America already has the highest corporate taxes in the world, which helps drive jobs overseas. Even Barack Obama said he is open to reducing the corporate tax rate. What’s more, guess what happens when corporate taxes are increased? Companies raise their prices. So this is a hidden way for liberal Democrats to stick it to the middle class to fund their pet projects: raise taxes on businesses, and the higher retail prices that result are seldom linked back to the politicians who caused it.

But there’s more! Sinema wrote a bill to create a new, 25-CENT TAX on EVERY plastic bag you use at a supermarket, convenience store, fast food restaurant and other retail establishment – even including dry cleaner bags. She’d also nail you with a 15 cent tax for every paper bag. That’ll teach those work at home moms she calls leeches!

She also opposed a 2008 Arizona ballot initiative to ban all real property sales or transfer taxes, and another one to make it harder to raise taxes or increase government spending by requiring initiatives to pass by a majority of all registered voters. She called them “stinkers” and organized a group to oppose them. [“Unite and Conquer: How to build coalitions that win—and last,” by Kyrsten Sinema (2009), p. 67.]

What about federal taxes?

In June of this year, Sinema said we should let all the Bush-Obama tax relief expire this coming January, which would be a $5.4 TRILLION tax increase over 10 years. Even her Democratic primary opponents were flabbergasted by this job-killing promise. Fellow Democrat Andrei Cherny wrote:

“this is not the time to be raising taxes on the middle class. Just recently, one of my opponents, Kyrsten Sinema, vowed to repeal the Bush tax cuts in total …. This speaks to her values and approach and I think it is the wrong way to deal with a middle class that is getting battered.”

The Sinema tax increase would nail every middle class taxpayer in America and drive our teetering economy off a cliff. US economic growth in 2012 under President Obama is less than 2% (by contrast, growth in China is around 8%). Her tax increase would send us back into recession.

Finally, consider all her massive promises of more and bigger government programs: where will she get the funding for all of them? As a member of Obama’s health care taskforce, she already helped craft his healthcare takeover bill, Obamacare, which includes a $716 BILLION cut to Medicare over the next 10 years. She can’t pay for all her promises by raiding Medicare — she’ll need to jack up taxes, including on working families and job-creators. That’s bad news for all of us.

Kyrsten Sinema has been quite candid about her plans to raise your taxes. Will you let her? The clear choice for Arizona is Vernon Parker.

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