Editorial: Sen. Manning is prepared to wave goodbye to Oregon businesses

Published 12:00 am Thursday, June 6, 2019

State Sen. James Manning Jr., D-Eugene, said in May on the Senate floor that Oregon should let businesses leave if they didn’t want to pay more taxes, because other businesses will come in.

Here is the exact quote: “We can’t tax corporations because they will leave. Let ’em leave. Somebody else will come in.”

If all the new taxes on Oregon business in this legislative session hadn’t already convinced you that Oregon’s Democratic leaders didn’t have it in for business, maybe that tipped the balance.

But on Monday Manning argued people have gotten what he said wrong. “I rise today in defending myself,” he said on the Senate floor. He said his comments have been mischaracterized and taken out of context.

Really? Let’s try to understand what he meant.

Spoiler alert: He meant just what he said.

The quote comes from his comments on May 23 during a floor discussion in the Senate about Senate Bill 1049. That bill proposes, in part, to divert some contributions from public employees on the state retirement system called PERS to help pay down the system’s $25 billion-plus shortfall. Passage of the bill helps ensure that any new taxes for education will end up in the classroom, rather than paying for retirement benefits.

Manning voted for the bill, but it was a difficult vote for him. He very much wanted to increase education funding and didn’t want to hurt retirement benefits for public employees at the same time. “What do you do when two worlds collide?” he repeated several times.

He discussed the importance of education funding as “a social equalizer” and then went on to express his disgust at the argument that the state’s top income earners will leave the state if their taxes are raised. “I say leave the state,” he said. “Somebody else will come in. I get so sick and tired of hearing that.”

He then went on to make the same sort of argument about corporations. “We can’t tax corporations because they will leave,” he said. “Let ’em leave. Somebody else will come in.”

We can’t know what was in Manning’s heart when he said that. It could have been something else beyond the obvious, right? What else could he have meant?

Maybe Manning meant that he really agreed with the argument, but was just tired of businesses having to defend themselves against new taxes. Does that sound right?

Not at all. His comments were correctly characterized and in context. Manning doesn’t care all that much if Oregon businesses are driven out of the state by new taxes.