This Tax Day, Remember Iowa Republicans Are Misusing Your Tax Dollars
DES MOINES – This Tax Day, Iowans are seeing their tax dollars recklessly misspent by Iowa Republicans. While working families struggle to make ends meet and face rising costs, Kim Reynolds and Randy Feenstra are using Iowans’ hard-earned tax dollars to fund tax breaks for powerful insiders and special interest groups, unaccountable private school vouchers, and even using public funds to bankroll personal plane rides and campaign ads.
Here’s a reminder of how Iowa Republicans are misusing your tax dollars:
- Ballooning the budget deficit: Reynolds blew a nearly $1.4 billion hole in the state budget to fund tax breaks for powerful insiders and special interests, and her years of fiscally irresponsible policies have made Iowa the worst state in the country for economic growth. Iowa Republicans also forced working families to pay $500 more this year for health insurance due to Reynolds’ Medicaid mismanagement and health care budget shortfall.
- Gutting the auditor’s office: Reynolds admitted to gutting the auditor’s office and covering up for powerful insiders by signing SF478, “the worst pro-corruption bill in Iowa history.” The partisan bill blocks the state auditor from seeing how public funds are being spent, making it harder to hold Reynolds’ administration and government insiders accountable.
- Unaccountable school vouchers: The Republicans running for governor support private school vouchers that drive up costs and rip away tax dollars from our students, teachers, and parents to foot the bill for Iowa’s wealthiest families. Feenstra voted for Reynolds’ unaccountable voucher scheme in the state legislature and voted in Congress to rip public funds away from public schools to fund unaccountable private schools, while Adam Steen and Zach Lahn want to go even further by attacking public school funding and oversight for vouchers. Brad Sherman and Eddie Andrews have both praised Reynolds’ vouchers.
- Secret taxpayer-funded state plane: Reynolds used a $4.7 million secret state-owned plane to attend multiple political events on the taxpayer’s dime, something not one GOP gubernatorial candidate has said was wrong. Steen was Reynolds’ right hand man as former Iowa Department of Administrative Services director, bragged about serving as a “C.O.O. type of role for the state,” and said “I support everything that Governor Reynolds is doing,” but has refused to say what he knew about the plane, when he knew it, and whether he signed off on it.
- Funding campaign with taxpayer dollars: Before the midterm caucuses, Feenstra spent $33,000 in taxpayer-funded resources on statewide radio ads to “make a good impression on activists” and shore up support for his campaign. Despite that, he still flopped and finished a distant third in straw polls. A taxpayer even asked Feenstra point-blank why he misused her money on campaign ads, but Feenstra shamelessly refused to give a straight answer about his shady and unethical behavior.
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