Chuck Shumer is an idiot

Maybe I am too since my fingers refused to correctly type "idiot."

I'm trying to figure out how the Senator from NY is going to go about cutting school property taxes in half. I'm confused about why he would want to cut school property taxes in half. I guess he wants to weaken the connection between property wealth and school finance, but the states all have reasonably effective policies for doing that. The policies aren't perfect because they typically don't allow for negative aid to particularly high property wealth districts, but they do result in a situation in which we approach access equality. It's pretty clear from doing the math that the Feds increasing grants to school districts would serve to further reduce disparity and if the Feds mandate a cut in school property taxes that is accompanied by an equally large grant, then that would be okay, I suppose. The real issue is that people hate the property tax and proposing to cut property taxes is particularly popular. Unfortunately, the Feds aren't likely to make up the lost revenue in grants which will require school districts to raise sales or income taxes, or create entirely new taxes. It's not clear that state legislatures would pass legislation allowing for local income taxes (it damn sure wouldn't happen in Texas), which means a sales tax increase. It doesn't seem to me that the traditional democratic agenda involves replacing mildly progressive taxes with highly regressive taxes. Maybe New York Democrats are different.