Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) on Tuesday denied planning to raise taxes on millions of Americans even after releasing a GOP agenda that would do that very thing.
Scott’s “11-Point Plan to Save America,” released earlier in the day, calls for the more than half of Americans who don’t pay income taxes to “pay some income tax to have skin in the game.”
Yet when questioned about his blueprint for governing should the GOP win back Congress in the 2022 midterms, Scott told Sean Hannity that raising taxes is not part of the agenda.
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“By the way, did you see Chuck Schumer say that your plan is to raise taxes on more than half of Americans?” the Fox News host asked. “I didn’t see that in your plan. Did you have that in your plan? Was that in invisible ink in the copy that I got?”
“Of course not,” Scott replied, claiming that as governor of Florida, he “cut taxes and fees a hundred times.” Senate Majority Leader Schumer (D-NY), he added, “is all in to take every dime you have.”
But it was Scott’s plan, not Schumer’s, that drew heavy criticism after circulating online. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki tweeted Tuesday afternoon that it “doesn’t include a single proposal to lower prices for the middle class.”
A Washington Post analysis of Scott’s plan cites the Tax Foundation’s finding that in 2020, 61 percent of Americans paid no income tax. Many of these are lower-income or retirees on social security.
Scott, who was challenged last year on the issue of taxes and the national deficit, included in his plan objectives that viewers of Hannity’s show will likely agree with, like finishing the border wall and naming it after ex-President Donald Trump, banning all racial disclosures on government forms, stopping “left-wing efforts to rig elections,” and treating “socialism” as a “foreign combatant.” Scott is also keen on having public school students say the Pledge of Allegiance, stand for the National Anthem and salute the flag—strange requirements from someone who has assailed the effects of “big government” on individual freedoms.
In any event, Scott seems to believe that this is all for the better.
“It’s what our parents taught us, right? Say the pledge of allegiance, salute the flag,” he said.
“We have the greatest country in the world. We have great Founding Fathers: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. They gave us more opportunity to succeed than any place in the world. We should be colorblind. We should not be asking people what color their skin is, their race. Why is the government doing that? We shouldn’t separate ourselves, but put ourselves together.”
