Will Walker's Support of Corporate Welfare and Tax Increases to Aid Billionaire Owners of NBA Bucks Dash His Presidential Hopes?

Fox Sports reports on Wisconsin Governor and leading Republican presidential nominee Scott Walker's support of a deal to raise taxes and have taxpayers subsidize a new arena for the Milwaukee Bucks NBA basketball team which is owned by New York-based billionaires Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry:

Gov. Scott Walker spoke in favor Thursday of key elements of a reported deal for a new

Gov. Scott Walker

$500 million arena for the Milwaukee Bucks that includes raising taxes on Milwaukee County hotel rooms and rental cars. 

Walker's support for central parts of the plan came as conservatives, including the influential group Americans for Prosperity, blasted the latest funding proposal as irresponsible and harmful to taxpayers.   

Terms of the deal have yet to be made public. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, citing unnamed sources, reported Thursday that the most recent proposal would include $250 million from taxpayers, with another $150 million coming from Bucks owners and $100 million from former U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, a previous Bucks owner.   

Terms of the deal have yet to be made public. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, citing unnamed sources, reported Thursday that the most recent proposal would include $250 million from taxpayers, with another $150 million coming from Bucks owners and $100 million from former U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, a previous Bucks owner. 

The likely Republican presidential candidate was asked about the report Thursday and indicated support for some of its central elements, including the taxes that could be levied to pay for it. Walker said he doesn't consider the potentially higher taxes in Milwaukee County a tax increase because the Wisconsin Center Board already has the authority to raise them but isn't doing it, he told reporters in Portage.

On the tax increase question, Governor Walker tried to finesse the issue saying that the deal didn't raise "statewide taxes"  Instead he claimed that the increase of the rental car tax to 4 percent and the hotel tax to 3 percent is already authorized and wouldn't be a new tax.   Even though rental car taxes are often referred to as visitor taxes, a major 2010 study on rental car usage found that most cars are rented at non-airport locations, usually by locals.


Wesley Edens and Marc Lasry,
Owners of the Milwaukee Bucks

The Wisconsin State Director of Americans for Prosperity says that Walker's claim is "based on fuzzy math, complicated accounting and taxpayer dollars."

Virtually every academic study of subsidies for professional sports show they are an extremely poor investment for local government.  David Schultz, a professor at the Hamline University School of Business, explains in an 2011 article titled "Dumb and dumber: The folly of taxpayer handouts for professional sports."  In that article Prof. Schultz also talks about other academic studies reach the same conclusion that "[p]ublic support of professional and minor league sports is a bad investment. "

What is mind-boggling is that Governor Walker seems completely oblivious as to how unpopular corporate welfare is, even more so when it is paid by higher taxes on working men and women.  The Tea Party, such a powerful force in the Republican Party, was founded to oppose corporate bailouts at the end of the Bush presidency.  But opposition to corporate welfare runs the entire length of the political spectrum, from the most conservative voters to the least. 

It's only a matter of time before Republican presidential candidates seize on Walker's support for taxpayer handouts and higher taxes for the Bucks arena.  And when they do, electoral support for Walker will drop like a rock.