The Tax Eaters

Continuing the reflection of the previous post, it occurs to me that a fair case can be made that the media has it wrong: the people DON’T want property tax reform. Or any kind of reform. Not if it means troubling oneself to vote, anyway.

Consider:

In Colorado, a combination of various spending interests coalesces around a measure to suspend a tax-and-spend limitation provisions, permitting the government to spend billions more than would otherwise have been permissible. It receives 52% of the vote.

In California, four ballot measures go down to lopsided defeats, each one of which was not only eminently reasonable, but essential if true reform is to be effected. One made getting tenure slightly more difficult. One limited public employee union muscle. Another capped state spending. The last would effectively prevent incumbent-protection-legislative-district gerrymandering.

Public employee unions and the Democrats who run Sacramento worked together to spend tens of millions to defeat each measure. One can be certain of one thing: every single teacher, cop, firefighter, and bureaucrat voted. The machine pols ensured that their people went to the polls to preserve their ability to draw districts, maintain power, and dole out the taxpayer boodle.

And the people yawned.

Consider further: voters in New Jersey overwhelming elected an avowed enemy of the taxpayers, Jon Corzine. They increased, albeit marginally, the Democratic legislative majority, which has made tax increases a priority, ignored calls for property tax relief, and turned pork barrel spending into an art form. Unless one believes the voters to be total ignoramuses, one must assume that they know precisely what they’re doing, and that they WANT more of the same. Which, of course, is precisely what they’re going to get.

It’s risky to make predictions; words taste better coming out than being choked back down. But if Jon Corzine’s Senate record is any indication, and if the election is seen – as it quite reasonably can be – as a referendum on the past four years, the next four will feature a further explosion of taxes, spending, and borrowing. To the extent that anything whatsoever is done about property tax reform, it will be coupled with a reciprocal increase in other taxes; spending will be off the table. The net result: government will continue to grow by leaps and bounds. At best, the burden of paying for it will shift a bit, driving ever more upper middle class folks and businesses to the friendly confines of Pennsylvania and Delaware.

This suits the tax eaters just fine. A coalition of those who benefit from high taxes and spending – urban residents and public employee unions, primarily – want nothing more than to keep the boodle flowing. They will continue to feed at public expense, demanding (and receiving) ever more generous wages, benefits, and subsidies. They might offer tax relief to some segments of society, using that measure to purchase enough votes to keep the game going. But if one makes over $40,000 or so from any employer other than government – and, most assuredly, if one makes more than $100,000 – one is very much in the cross hairs.

A fair percentage of the people don’t even care enough to vote. As with most governmental programs, those benefitting from them are infinitely more motivated to keep the spigot flowing than are the taxpayers to shut it off. The populace may seethe a bit, but provided that they’re not motivated by a Florio-like animus, the tax-eaters will continue to rule in Trenton.

Which, finally, brings us to the necessity of nominating conservatives. As noted previously, Republicans almost never win in New Jersey, mostly because Jim Florio isn’t running. Twice in the past 25 years, the Democrats overreached, ticking off enough voters to give the GOP an opportunity. Both times, the Republicans nominated "moderates" – mediaspeak for liberals – who claimed to be fiscal conservatives, but governed every bit as poorly as did their Democratic predecessors and successors. Kean doubled the size of state spending; Whitman spent only slightly less, and borrowed astonishingly irresponsibly. Neither worked to ensure the fundamental changes which were – and remain – necessary to prevent the problem from repeating itself, such as evicting the Courts from policy matters, curtailing the power of public employee unions, and effecting constitutional change to make tax increases more difficult. Neither made the slightest effort to address property tax inequity, driven primarily by unreasonable urban spending. Neither made the slightest effort to prevent future pork.

Because neither had a vision of how government ought to work which differed in any fundamental way from that of the Democrats.

Nominate a conservative and one can be absolutely certain of one thing: an endless barrage of media stories about whether a pro-lifer who isn’t terrified of firearms can possibly win. And, when such a conservative loses, his loss will be attributed to New Jersey’s "blue state" animus for conservatives. But given the almost unbroken string of "moderate" losses, including yet another shellacking this year, if we’re going to lose, it might as well be with a candidate who actually offers the people a choice rather than with yet another pale echo of the Democratic candidate. That is, winning an election ought to result in a change in policy. Why would the electorate believe that the GOP represents a different perspective when our candidates, once elected, behave just as irresponsibly as the Democrats?

To the extent that the populace cares, that is. Given the results in New Jersey, California, and Colorado, the public – if it wants reform at all – clearly brings less passion to supporting it than do the tax-eaters bring to opposing it. When the next opportunity arises to make changes – when the tax-eaters push the envelope too far, as they inevitably will – it behooves the GOP to strike quickly and decisively to slay the beast, once and for all, forever precluding the spending interests from voting themselves money at the expense of all-too-often lethargic populace.