Rep. Doggett discusses taxes, debt and guns

Editor’s Note: Last week, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett stopped by the San Marcos Daily Record office to meet with staff and answer questions about current issues. This is Part II of Staff Reporter Robin Blackburn’s interview with Doggett. Part One was published Tuesday.

BLACKBURN: Now on to tax policy… the tax reform last year that cut the corporate tax rate down to 21 percent and the administration’s latest proposed tax cut would overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans. How do you feel these tax policies will affect lower- and middle-income Americans in the long run, and how will it affect our national deficit?

DOGGETT: Well, the latter point will affect all of us and certainly will affect people of all economic levels. I believe the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday an increase of about 29 percent in the debt over the last year. We’re talking trillions of dollars in debt from what’s already been done. The last week we were in session another round of proposals called Health Savings Accounts added almost another $100 billion. There’s another proposal the administration is trying to impose, as you mentioned, to add additional hundreds of billions of dollars, and the House Republicans are proposing legislation they say will bring up a vote in September to add more than that. That is an incredible debt burden. It’s as if all the deficit hawks flew south and departed – they’re certainly not there advocating fiscal responsibility anymore. And immediately it provides an argument against any type of social service or education initiative that we have in Washington – that we cannot afford it. And over time it puts a real burden on the future of Social Security and Medicare. And we cannot sustain the kind of increase in the national debt we have and meet the needs of the country over the long haul. Particularly the corporate tax rate was lowered to a level far below that that could be justified. And I always felt it should be lowered, but below the 35 percent level, but not by borrowing money to do it. And there needed to be a closing of loopholes in corporate tax laws. I think that instead new incentives have been provided in the law to outsource some jobs from America abroad, and I have legislation specifically targeting the incentives in the law that I think will encourage jobs to be produced abroad instead of at home. 

BLACKBURN: And the, um, “tax cut” that we got earlier this year – how is that going to affect withholding for taxes next year?

DOGGETT: There are several things about that. I think that for a large number of Americans,  they’ll find they have a bill next April that they weren’t expecting because a not sufficient amount was being withheld. You’ll recall that the administration told everyone to expect a $4,000 increase in their average household income this year because of the tax cuts, and then [U.S. Treasury] Secretary Mnuchin said, “No, it’ll be $4,500.” I have yet to meet anyone, unless they’re very wealthy, who could see any significant increase … the people like at Wal-Mart, to get the full $1,000, had to work there for 20 years. And so there are some who benefit. There’s some short-term stimulus effect to our economy. But on the long haul I think most of the investment analysis is that the debt will slow economic growth, and that will happen at the same time that we have challenges with Social Security and Medicare, so it’s not a good formula for success.

BLACKBURN: Next subject: school safety. And this is really focusing more on gun control, because I think most people can agree that’s one of many arms to address the issue of mass shootings. How would you balance gun control with Second Amend protections for law-abiding citizens?

DOGGETT: Well, I grew up around guns, here in Travis County – not Hays County, but very much the same environment. I remember a proud morning in my family when my dad got the first buck in the county and got a 30-30 Winchester as a result of that. I respect the culture here. But there’s no one who needs a military assault weapon to kill a deer or anything other than a human being. And the concept of having universal background checks so that we don’t have people involved in domestic abuse, who have a history of mental illness, who have problems in the military, that they are denied a gun, just seems to me to be pretty elementary. 

I’ve got my Rattler tie on this morning because I speak each year to both – today, to all of the teachers and staff at San Marcos High School, next week to all the incoming students at Texas State. And it’s an environment that remains with great uncertainty, despite all the efforts that are made, necessary efforts for security, despite the great program that ALERRT has to train people, and I know the sheriff’s department has gotten credit for doing great things with security. I’m for all those things. The difference I think with here and other advanced countries is not that our law enforcement or security is any weaker, but that our guns are more plentiful. And they get in the hands of people that should not have them. The most recent activity I have about that is with reference to these 3-D printable guns, which I think is very alarming. The Trump administration had a non-public settlement with no hearing with this self-described anarchist, and I would say fanatic, in Austin, and I would say the notion that we’ll get to the point where there are plastic guns that cannot be detected as you’re going through a metal detector – whether it’s through the airport, a school, a hospital, whatever – is alarming. I have joined in legislation we filed here during the recess to require enough metal parts to be detectable and to require an identification so these can be traced, which is a problem for the police, but it won’t solve that problem and it also won’t get passed this year. I think our only hope for reasonable gun safety laws is, again, a new Congress with people that aren’t lock stock and barrel with the National Rifle Association.

BLACKBURN: What is your stance on the idea of school marshals or teachers who are allowed to carry concealed on campuses?

DOGGETT: I am very much in favor of strong – essentially police departments, which they usually are at school districts. The idea that more school officials with guns will make our children safer is wrong. The more guns that are around our school, the more danger there is to those children. And I think that most of the teacher groups – I know the new Austin police chief for the schools, the Austin Independent Schools chief, has come out against this. We want the security of law enforcement professionals. We want educators trained by ALERRT to be prepared. But the idea of having a gun in many classrooms will lead lead to more deaths, not more safety.

rblackburn@sanmarcosrecord.com

Twitter: @arobingoestweet