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Four
candidates have begun campaigning to be the next governor
of Virginia and already some editorial writers are
applying a wrongheaded standard to these
politicians. For
most of these writers, the test of a candidate’s
fitness for office is the degree to which the
candidate is willing to support more government and
higher taxes.
This
has always been a phony and dangerous test.
It assumes that our only hope for solving
social problems is more government and higher taxes.
We should have learned by now from the
experience of other nations that a bloated Leviathan
is not only a drag on the nation’s economy and on
private problem-solving, but also a threat to
individual liberty. A
government powerful enough to deal with all of our
problems is potent enough to restrict our freedoms.
All
across Europe,
governments are rolling back public programs that
have retarded economic growth.
Just last week, the French National Assembly
dismantled the compulsory 35-hour workweek that was
initiated in 1998.
Sponsors
of the shortened workweek promised that it could be
successfully implemented as a voluntary program and
would generate millions of new jobs.
When that didn’t happen, the National
Assembly made the program compulsory only to see the
unemployment rate in France
remain above 10 percent and salaries stagnate.
German
Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, meanwhile, is
proposing cuts in the corporate tax rate to stem the
flight of investment capital and jobs from Germany
to other nations with lower regulatory and tax
burdens. Unemployment
in
Germany
is currently at a 12.6 percent level.
Much
of the pressure for these changes has come from the
European Union’s newly admitted members, which
have tax and regulatory policies that are far more
attractive to business than those of France,
Germany
and other original EU member nations.
All
of the EU nations, including the former Communist
nations that were admitted last year, have at one
time embraced government programs to provide an
ambitious social safety net.
Most of those programs have gone too far, as
even some Socialists have conceded.
The
United
States
has its own competitiveness problems, not the least
of which are related to its dependence on foreign
energy supplies. Not
all of the concerns associated with American tax and
regulatory policies are the responsibility of the
national government.
California,
for example, which has an economy larger than most
EU countries, brought on most of its own economic
problems through excessive, government-imposed
burdens.
Where
Virginia
now stands in comparison to other states in terms of
taxes and regulations is less important than the
mindset of our political leaders.
If those advocating higher taxes and more
government prevail, the Commonwealth will surely
move toward the very conditions
California
has been trying to shake off since Arnold
Schwarzenegger was elected governor.
It is far easier to prevent those conditions
from happening than to reverse the policies that
contribute to them once those conditions have
developed.
Republicans
and Democrats alike can be faulted.
Both promise more government to win votes.
Every candidate should be pushed to lay out a
coherent vision and his or her guiding principles,
instead of the usual catalog of specific proposals.
It’s
never too early in a campaign season for voters to
try to shape the election-year debate rather than be
stuck with tired polemics from the candidates.
This year, we should have a debate about
governing philosophy, not a battle of catch-phrases,
sound-bites and programmatic “solutions.
--
March 28,
2005
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