In
all likelihood, you're not going to bother voting June
14 in either the Republican or Democratic Party
primaries. Like most of your fellow citizens, you
probably figure the top spots -- Jerry Kilgore for the
GOP and Tim Kaine for the Demos -- are a lock. And you haven't been paying
very close attention to the
other races, so you really don't care who gets
nominated.
That
would be a shame. If history is any indication, voter
turnout will be so dismally low that your single vote
will carry as much weight as four or five votes in, say,
a presidential election. What's more, there's actually a
lot to get fired up about.
One
way or another, the outcome of this primary season will
be seen as a validation of, or rejection of, the
decision by Gov. Mark R. Warner and the 2004 General
Assembly to raise taxes by an estimated $1.5 billion per
biennial budget. State senators aren't up for
re-election this year, but anti-tax partisans swore
vengeance against 17 Republicans who broke ranks with
the GOP majority in the House of Delegates to back the
tax hike.
I
fear that 2005 will go down as a watershed year when the
Virginia political class learned that it can jack up taxes with impunity. Think about it: Legislators enacted
a record tax increase in 2004 that turned out to be largely
unneeded. This year, they treated
citizens to the spectacle of carving up a billion-dollar
budget surplus without returning one dime of it to the
taxpayers. Now, emboldened, the state senate is laying
the groundwork to raise taxes by at least another $1
billion per year ($2 billion per biennium) to fund transportation.
Meanwhile, against this backdrop of state
spending, local governments have used soaring real
estate assessments to pocket ever higher tax revenues
themselves.
Never
in modern Virginia history--probably not since the old
Confederacy tried to sustain four years of total
war--has the Old Dominion
witnessed such a splurge of spending and taxes. Yet the
populace remains supine. The anti-taxers mustered only
seven candidates to run against the pro-tax incumbents.
Although it's conceivable that the challengers' youthful
enthusiasm may make up for their lack of experience,
connections and cash, they are all fighting uphill
battles. At the same time, the most forceful fiscal
conservative running for statewide office, George Fitch,
can barely get his name in print. His campaign against
Jerry Kilgore has never caught fire.
Unless
something extraordinary and unexpected happens at the
polls, the insurgents will be quelled, and a new Conventional
Wisdom will arise: Virginians are willing to pay higher
taxes. And, as surely as the earth circles around the
sun, legislators will oblige them. The list
of "unmet needs" and of petitioners to
articulate them stretches to the moon and beyond.
Those
who favor higher taxes characterize
anti-tax partisans as unsophisticated rubes -- peasants
with pitchforks -- whose passions, though perhaps
understandable, are volatile and misdirected. In
the cleverest formulation of this sentiment, fellow Bacon's Rebellion
columnist Barnie Day refers to them as "cold
fusion" Republicans, who would conjure money from
nothing to pay for all the state's pressing needs, or
"flat earth" Republicans who are so obtuse
they will believe anything.
If
politics were no more than battling bumper stickers, I
might characterize the pro-tax forces as the "Tax
First, Ask Questions Later" crowd. But that
wouldn't be quite accurate, for it implies that pro-tax
politicians occasionally do question their basic suppositions, which, in my experience, they do not.
From what I could glean, the billion-dollar
budget surplus didn't prompt the slightest soul
searching over the question of whether the previous
year's tax tax increase in any way
overdone. Far from revising their fiscal assumptions,
Virginia's lawmakers conducted themselves much the same
as my seven-year-old son's birthday companions last week
when, after battering it repeatly, they finally ruptured
the Sponge Bob pinata: Swarming like mice from all
corners of the pavilion, children threw themselves greedily
upon the candy on the floor.
In
truth, the pro-tax advocates are the rubes, for they
share the children's view of the world as a
zero-sum game. Politicians scramble for
the finite supply of Sponge Bob candy on the floor, impervious to the
thought that all might benefit if they could only grow
the size of the pinata--or, more imaginatively, pack it
with a tastier assortment of goodies.
The anti-tax movement
espouses a more sophisticated view of governance.
Contrary to widespread aspersions, tax cutters advance
ideas for limiting government spending that don't
entail taking chainsaws to Kindergarten teachers or
boiling Medicaid patients in oil. These ideas include:
Precept
One: Low taxes promote
economic growth. Most people grasp the concept that
businesses and talented individuals migrate to locales
where state and local governments take a smaller share
of their income. Some may reply snidely that if low
taxes create economies like Mississippi's, let's have
high taxes. But they obviously haven't compared the
long-term growth rates of Mississippi's to, say, upstate
New York's over the past 50 years. World-class urban
centers like New York City and Washington, D.C., might be able defy the
downward gravitational tug of high taxes, but smaller
cities and
rural areas cannot.
Precept
Two: In
the long run, a strong, vibrant economy taxed at low
rates generates more revenue
than a stagnant economy taxed at high rates. A
low-tax, pro-business environment has vaulted Virginia
from a middling-income state in the 1960s to a
top-quintile state today. It took two generations to
accomplish, but the Commonwealth is undeniably better
off now as the result of our forefathers' forbearance.
The populace is
more prosperous, and governments have more money to
spend.
Of
course, low taxes are not the only thing that
explains economic growth. In theory, government
spending that increases the productivity of the private sector can bolster economic growth and expansion of
the tax base, too. That, at least, is the justification
for spending more money on schools and roads.
That's
true, I suppose. But here's my response: Why not start
with increasing the productivity of government?
That way we can avoid raising taxes and still find the resources
needed to improve the quality of our schools and other
pressing needs. Which brings us to...
Precept
Three: State and local
governments can achieve enormous savings by improving their
business processes, just as the private sector has done.
The Wilder Commission identified more than $750 million
in annual savings, and the Warner administration claims
to have implemented many of them. But where are the
savings? Where do the reduced expenditures appear in the
budget? Yes, there are pockets of real improvement--The
Virginia Department of Transportation has cut staff by
1,100, saving $67.5 million in payroll, while improving
performance. But that feat hasn't been replicated
anywhere else. No one has convinced me that Virginia has come
close to reaping the full potential savings.
Precept
Four: Reforming inefficient land use patterns
can reduce the cost of government. Scattered,
disconnected, low-density development drives up the cost of delivering
local government services and the cost of extending the transportation
system. Our political leaders studiously avoid dealing
with this problem, however, finding it easier to bilk
the public into accepting another tax increase than to
engage in the
dogged, unremitting toil required to change the
laws and regulations that create the underlying problem.
So,
when June 14 rolls around and you wonder whether it's
worth the effort to leave home 15 minutes early to go to
the polls, just ask yourself one question. Who would you
rather have running Virginia? The guys who reflexively
spend your money and raise your taxes? Or the guys who
set a higher standard of high- performance, low-cost,
pro-income growth government?
Vote
for an anti-tax candidate near you. Send
a message: Raising taxes is the refuge of the lazy and
the witless. Demand a 21st-century
government for a 21st-century world. Fan the flames.
Join the Rebellion.
--
June 6, 2005
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