Rep. Sorrell: One-time tax rebate rather than permanent tax cut ‘a huge mistake’

Earlier this month, Gov. Kay Ivey committed to tax relief for Alabamians that would include “some form of rebates.”

This comes as Alabama’s state budget and the Education Trust Fund (ETF) have received record revenue this past fiscal year, due in part to federal money allocated from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

Wednesday on WVNN’s “The Yaffee Program,” State Rep. Andrew Sorrell (R-Muscle Shoals) discussed what kind of tax relief program he would support in Alabama.

“I think that’s a huge mistake,” Sorrell said on the possibility of a one-time tax rebate. “Now I’m not saying I wouldn’t vote for a tax rebate, of course I would. Any time you put money back in the hands of the voting public I think that’s what we need to do. But I want to do it on a permanent basis.”

Sorrell, the GOP nominee for state auditor, said he does not buy the argument that passing a permanent tax cut would damage future funding projects.

“I don’t think we have a revenue problem in Montgomery,” he argued. “What I’ve witnessed in Montgomery the last four years is a spending problem. So I’ve heard other politicians say, ‘Well we’ve got to be fiscally responsible, we don’t want to cut taxes because then our revenue might drop in the future.’ Well they’ve got it completely backwards. Being fiscally responsible as a government means not spending as much money. It doesn’t mean continuing to spend a lot of money and then only doing a tax rebate instead of tax cuts.”

The focus of the Legislature should be to cut the size of the state government, according to Sorrell.

“A rebate is going to be … a one year thing,” he noted. “So we’re just going to continue growing government after that. Well I’m one of those ‘radical’ people who think we need to actually stop the growth of government and, in fact, even shrink state government. I think state government is too big. Federal government certainly is too big. State government is also too big, and we need to rein our spending in. And if we reined it in even a little bit we could provide massive tax cuts for the people of Alabama, and I think we’d really be a magnet for brining other people to this state.”

The state lawmaker admitted that this is a problem on both sides of the political isle in the Yellowhammer State.

“The dirty little secret is the Republicans and Democrats both like spending money,” Sorrell lamented. “In Montgomery, if all the Democrats are for the budget, all the Republicans are too. … I think that Republicans just need to draw a clear contrast between the Democrats on state government spending. There doesn’t seem to be as much restraint as I would like to see exercised.”

Yaffee is a contributing writer to Yellowhammer News and hosts “The Yaffee Program” Weekdays 9-11am on WVNN. You can follow him on Twitter @Yaffee