Crawford Defends Proposal On Conservative Talk Radio

On Thursday, Politico broke the story – “Freshman Republican Rep. Rick Crawford will propose a surtax on millionaires Thursday morning, a crack in the steadfast GOP opposition to extracting more money from the nation’s top earners.”

That sentence sent shock waves through the conservative blogosphere including sites such as RedState that declared, “We are stuck with a progressive OWS (Occupy Wall Street) congressman from a conservative state for another 2 years.”

The odd part is most of us here in Arkansas had not a clue about Crawford’s proposal until the idea was completely revealed.  By the time the full story came out from Crawford later that morning, most conservatives back home were ready to tar-and-feather him.  Even fellow Arkansas members of the Arkansas delegation were caught completely by surprise.

The rest of the story (as Paul Harvey would say) is that Crawford’s surtax of 5 percent on those with taxable income over a million dollars is coupled with a requirement that Congress first pass a Balance Budget Amendment to the U.S. Constitution before the tax hike would go into effect.  This information was not included in the original story and did not come out until later that morning when Crawford’s office clarified his position in a statement.

By then, a huge chunk of damage had already been done back home, including local conservative talk radio host Dave Elswick openly calling for his defeat, if not this year, certainly in two years.  Filing for office closed two weeks ago and Crawford does not have a primary opponent.

Crawford took to the air waves to defend his proposal on Jonesboro-based conservative talk radio host Paul Harrell’s Program. (Full audio here with the interview starting about 34 minutes in.)

“I think people are missing the key point of this. The key point is the Balanced Budget Amendment,” said Crawford. “We have to have permanent structural reform if we are going to get our arms around the problem and we know we have a spending problem in D.C.”

Crawford  bemoaned how broken the process has become in Washington. He insisted that the so-called “gang of 10o” Congressmen were meeting behind closed doors working out a temporary compromise that would include some revenue increases and entitlement reform without long-term solutions.

“I am not trying to make this a class warfare issue,” insisted Crawford. “One of the key elements that (Democrats) have that they want to address this current fiscal crisis is the millionaires’ tax. I don’t like the millionaire tax, but I am absolutely committed to the Balanced Budget Amendment.”

Crawford continued that the deficit problem was such that it was unrealistic to consider only spending cuts and that revenue increases are simply a reality.

“We have to adjust to the reality that there are going to be tax increases,” said Crawford saying that “the math just does not bear out” without it.

“I am willing to compromise on a short-term tax provision for a long-term structural reform,” he continued. “We have to realize how deep this hole is.”

“I don’t want to think that we have to raise revenues, but the numbers are just not on our side on that score. What I am afraid of is that the kind of cutting that it would require would mean that there would be absolutely nothing left to keep our promises to our seniors in regards to Medicare and Social Security and we would not be in a position to adequately care for folks who genuinely need our help,” concluded Crawford.