The NCAA proved me wrong. After California forced its hand, the NCAA ruling board voted unanimously Oct. 29 to begin the process to allow college athletes to profit off of their names and likenesses.

Aside from the obvious benefits to college athletes, fans are already salivating over the possibility of EA Sports recreating its incredibly popular college football and basketball games after a 10-year hiatus.

 But, one prominent North Carolina senator sensed another opportunity from the NCAA’s actions. 

Less than four hours after the news broke, Richard Burr, North Carolina’s senior senator, tweeted: “If college athletes are going to make money off their likenesses while in school, their scholarships should be treated like income. I’ll be introducing legislation that subjects scholarships given to athletes who choose to ‘cash in’ to income taxes.”

If there’s one thing the public associates with the Republican Party, it’s jumping at any opportunity to create new taxes. 

As of Nov. 6, Burr had not introduced the legislation. His tweet was deliciously ratioed; people commenting criticism far outnumbered those who simply liked or retweeted. 

Like almost every elected Republican, Burr voted in favor of a massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans in 2017. It’s almost as if the tax cuts are not paying for themselves, and the government needs a new source of revenue. 

It’s almost as if Republicans’ age-old promise that cutting taxes at the top will benefit everyone is a ploy to only cut taxes for their rich donors. After all, many of the government officials who wrote the original tax bill now lobby for the companies who benefit from it.

Burr, who said he is retiring in 2022, saw an opportunity to raise taxes on an overwhelmingly impoverished, predominantly minority group of Americans, because money can’t trickle down from the bottom now, can it?

 It’s one thing to ratio him on Twitter. It’s another entirely to vote and ensure his hand-picked successor as well as his partner, Thom Tillis, do not represent North Carolina after 2022.