What Happened on Monday? The Latest Argument From the Business Lobby Has Me Worried.
Are WA’s business lobbyists still employed? Their benefactors surely did not get what they paid for this week during a hearing for the wealth tax on capital gains.
If you watched Monday’s House Finance Committee hearing on Senate Bill 5096 — which would create a wealth tax on the extraordinary capital gains profits of the super-rich — then you’re probably just as concerned as I am.
Turnout was overwhelming. Roughly twice as many people signed up in support of SB 5096 as opponents, and experts on tax equity and revenue policy, community leaders, child care owners, and parents from all over the state Zoomed in with compelling testimony. They spoke for the millions of Washingtonians who have applied for unemployment, cash, or food assistance over the last year and are struggling to make ends meet in a state with underfunded services and a woefully upside-down tax code.
It’s always nice to start your week on a win. And, frankly, all of us deserved to celebrate being one step closer to balancing Washington’s tax code and passing a no-brainer wealth tax on Wall Street windfalls.
But that’s not what I’m feeling right now. Instead, I’m worried. I’m worried about our friends in the business lobby, y’all. Their collective goose got cooked on Monday. Seasoned, crispy-skinned, baked-for-two-hours-at-325-degrees cooked. I don’t want to start rumors, but I think job security could be a very real concern, because their big industry benefactors surely did not get their money’s worth on Monday. I’d hate to be a fly on the wall when they reported back to their boss, who I can only assume is just a cloaked Emperor Palpatine-like figure who only communicates by hologram.
Maybe their fecklessness is because this is the most disingenuous dog of a PR campaign they’ve ever had to run. Defending 8,000 rich people from a single-digit tax on six-figure profits? There are a lot of things money can buy — alas, it can’t buy you sympathy for the uber-rich. Especially when the only rich people we’re hearing from are basically begging the state to tax them.
Look, over the last handful of years I’ve had the pleasure of going head-to-head with a few well-prepared corporate lobbyists in editorial board meetings, media interviews, and community forums on issues from the minimum wage to overtime pay. To be clear, they’re always wrong, but they at least put up a fight. They trot out old, disproven anecdotes and flawed studies that eat up the clock as you debunk and disassemble decades of trickle-down conditioning. It’s tiring, but as a joyless press flack one of your few pleasures in life is dunking on a revolving line of corporate lobbyists in tan suits and 90s ties.
But on Monday the best argument they could muster was: “You know, $10,000,000 sounds like a lot,” but it really isn’t.
The thing is, though, it is a lot. Like, a lot a lot. And making an argument that $10,000,000 isn’t that much money in the middle of a pandemic and economic crisis that has devastated millions of families while tech investors and rich people have made it through unscathed is particularly out of touch. There was no dunking to be had on Monday, because our usually marginally-formidable opponents just Lister Blister-ed themselves.
For context, they were talking about capital gains from selling a business. Under SB 5096, the sale of all family-owned businesses would be exempt if the business made less than $10 million a year in revenue. If someone sold a family-owned “small business” that made more than $10 million a year in revenue, then that fortunate seller would pay a small wealth tax on the price of the sale. That’s a hell of a lot of money in annual revenue. That’s not a small business. As Dan Olmstead, the owner of Poverty Bay Coffee Company in Federal Way put it, “paying this tax would mean that I’ve done pretty darn well.”
So what happened? My guess is the usual cabal of big business brains leaned on their friends in the tech startup industry to pinch hit for them. But the end result was just a couple tech folks whining about having to pay $70 if they cashed out $251,000 in stock options. As Palpatine warned Luke, “your faith in your friends is your weakness.”
Winning doesn’t taste as good when it’s easy. Thankfully, I now have some free time this week I’d usually spend rebutting actually cogent arguments, so I thought I’d put together some talking points that should hew pretty closely to their usual advocacy on any given issue:
- ________ will have unintended consequences [may also replace with “hurt those it intends to help”].
- ________ will be a slippery slope to ________.
- ________ ________ job creators ________ who ________.
Fill in the blanks, my biz buddies. I know these are the same garbage points that we disprove over and over again, but it’s better than what we heard on Monday. We can only fix one thing at a time, so let’s at least get you back to square one.
To my counterparts in the business lobby: I know you’re better than this. Let’s see some more hustle out there.
