Republicans will make striking teachers pay for their raises. Literally.

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Tax hikes in Arizona, Oklahoma, and other states will burden middle- and low-income workers.

Arizona teachers returned to class on May 4 after ending a six-day strike that closed nearly all of the state’s 2,000-plus schools. Educators returned to work after the state legislature gave them a 20 percent salary raise over three years and some extra funding for public education.

But there’s a catch: Lawmakers are going to make them and other middle- and working-class Arizonans pay for the raise.

Teachers had wanted legislators to raise business and income taxes on wealthy Arizonans to restore cuts to public education and boost anemic teacher salaries. Republicans gave in to some of the demands for more funding — but they’re not paying for the salary hike with new taxes on the wealthy. Instead, the legislature passed a fee on motorists, and shifted most of the cost of desegregating schools from the state to taxpayers in low-income school districts. Those levies will largely hit working- and middle-class taxpayers.

The developments in Arizona fit into a broader pattern. Teacher unrest has roiled a handful of (mostly conservative) states: Arizona, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Kentucky. The protests are a response to decades of funding cuts for education and years of tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefited businesses and wealthy taxpayers. In each of these states, teachers called on lawmakers to boost funding for public education with higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

For the most part, the strikes have proven effective in forcing Republican lawmakers in those states to restore some of that funding. But these legislatures have fiercely resisted efforts to raise any taxes. And when they have given in, they’ve done so in ways that would disproportionately hurt workers who are struggling to make ends meet.

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https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/5/8/17318482/teacher-strike-republican-taxes-pay-raise