Laura Bassett makes a great point here:
During his presidential campaign announcement speech last week, Texas Gov. Rick Perry lamented the "injustice" that nearly half of all Americans -- the poorest half -- "don't even pay any income tax." But in Texas, the tax burden is disproportionately shouldered by those families living below the poverty line, newly-released data from the Census Bureau show.
While Texas is generally considered a low-tax state since it doesn't impose a personal income tax, a new analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy finds the state's tax laws are actually "redistribute income away from ordinary families and towards the richest Texans."
My only disagreement here is with the word "but." The Republican Party and the conservative movement overwhelmingly favor a more regressive tax system. They favor more regressive taxes at the national level and at the state level.
I understand what Bassett is trying to say here -- Perry thinks the poor are getting off easy at the federal level, but they're getting soaked at the state level. I don't think Perry sees this as a contradiction. The whole thrust of Rick Perry's presidential campaign is to make federal policy more closely resemble Texas policy. Texas has a regressive tax code, and Perry wants the federal gvernment to have a more regressive tax code.