ALEC on the Mackinac Center Podcast: States Prioritizing Tax Cuts

ALEC Executive Vice President of Policy and Chief Economist Jonathan Williams was recently  featured on the Mackinac Center for Public Policy’s Overton Window podcast. Williams talked about the ALEC mission to be the nation’s trusted source for state policy solutions.

Elected officials want to pass popular legislation. They have to rely upon their senses to figure it out when they deal with complicated issues. One way politicians make sense of what voters want is to listen to the conversation going on across the country and the reaction to laws that are passed in other states. Jonathan Williams, the chief economist and executive vice president of policy at the American Legislative Exchange Council, helps legislators hear what is going on in other states at the conventions his organization hosts. I speak with him about it for this week’s Overton Window podcast.

“States are laboratories for innovation and collaboration, seeing what works and what doesn’t work,” Williams says.

The people at ALEC want to provide state legislators with the best ideas of what was happening in states to replicate.

“We have a library of nearly one thousand pieces of model legislation. It’s not a secretive thing. We encourage anyone with internet access to go out and check out all of these. Some obviously work for some states, some don’t,” he says. He recommends checking out ALEC’s 2022 policy priorities.

Williams has called on states to pass flat-rate income taxes for a long time. And recently, some state lawmakers have listened.

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