Putting the Taxpayers First

Recently, legislators have been deluged with E-mails from public employees, often under the heading "Don’t Tier Our Benefits", which read as follows:

"I have serious concerns about some of the recommendations in the reports of the Special Session committees.

The legislature broke the pension system by not funding it for many years. It is unfair to make future employees fix it by forcing them to accept lesser benefits. It is not their fault. Please don't tier our benefits!

I ask you to oppose reducing the level of benefits in the State Health Benefits Plan. We should be working to improve the health insurance available to all New Jerseyans, not trying to reduce that which is now available to some.

Placing a $15,000 cap on sick leave buy-outs directly undermines the collective bargaining process. It will most certainly result in litigation across the state. Reject this proposal!

Tightening caps on school budgets and requiring super majorities to approve budgets over cap may lower property taxes but at a significant cost to educational quality. Let's put kids first."

Never mind that these letters offer not one constructive suggestion. How should a legislator address the concerns raised?

First, the writer makes a good point: for the past 7 years or so, three administrations, and the Legislature, shamelessly refused to adequately fund the pension system, preferring, instead, to lavish mountains of pork upon urban districts. Obviously, no legislator who voted for ANY of the past seven budgets ought to receive the support of a single public employee. Indeed, these past five years have witnessed probably the most irresponsible budgeting in the history of the State.

And, yet, the same unions which now bellyache about legislative irresponsibility routinely supported the worst offenders, including Jim McGreevey, Richard Codey, and the Democratic legislative majority. Hence, it’s somewhat difficult to accept their present objections at face value. If they wanted honest budgeting, with honest pension proposals, they would have supported conservative Republicans.

Second, one aspect of the legislative "breaking" of the pension system involved an outright gift to public employees in the form of a gratuitous increase in benefits to the tune of about 9%. Curiously, the writers voice no objections whatsoever to this assault on the pension systems’ solvency, nor do they urge the repeal of this legislatively awarded, unearned windfall.

(All but one Assemblymen supported this gift and, I shamefully admit, I was not that one. Instead, to my Brother Merkt goes the honor of being the only Assemblyman with the foresight to see through the rosy predictions of the usually stalwart Pension Benefits Review Board, which assured the Legislature that the money for the benefits existed, when, clearly, it did not.)

That having been said, if the system is broken, there are essentially only two ways to fix it: cut benefits or increase taxes. That public employees support imposing the entire burden of fixing the system upon the public they purport to serve speaks very poorly of their devotion to public service.

"Working to improve the health insurance available to all New Jerseyans" seems most public spirited, but the writers omit two crucial items: (a) how that salutary goal should be effected and (b) who will pay the costs? Already, health insurance costs more in NJ than virtually anywhere else, in part due to legislatively imposed mandates. Besides, hiding behind the skirts of the citizenry while trying to defend the indefensible – "free" benefits for life for a select few – requires a certain degree of chutzpah. "All New Jerseyans" end up paying massive taxes to support fantastic benefits for public employees; the least these public servants might offer is to underwrite some of the costs for their own benefits themselves.

If defending "free" health insurance for life takes chutzpah, defending the right to bank unused sick time simply goes beyond the pale. Sick time is NOT an entitlement; it’s something one receives WHEN ONE IS SICK. If one does not get sick, the appropriate response is to thank a merciful God for one’s good fortune, NOT attempt to stick the taxpayers with a huge bill. Put another way, public employees are ALREADY paid for the days they work. If they don’t get sick, they should most certainly not be paid for not getting sick. Not only should we impose a cap on payment for unused sick time, that number established should be $0. In effect, public employees are demanding to get paid twice for actually showing up for work when they’re not sick. Talk about gall!!

"Undermining the collective bargaining process"? Please. If the unions want EVERYTHING on the table, that’s fair enough. We’ll start by eliminating every single statutory benefit, from tenure, to pensions, to days and hours (where do teachers come off with a 180 day work year?), to health benefit mandates, to paid time off for conventions, to mandatory holidays, the works. And let the state – or local units – bargain with the unions as they see fit, free from legislatively imposed mandates.

"Put kids first"? Great!! Start with the proposition that what’s good for the kids’ families is good for the kids, and massive property taxes funding outrageous spending undercuts childhood well-being. "Put kids first"? OK, vouchers – which enable parents to choose that which is best for their children – "puts kids first". I assume that’s what these folks have in mind.

Using kids as shields – and conflating that which maximizes the economic benefit to public employees with that which is best for our children – is a despicable tactic.

Let us be blunt: public employees serve a necessary role, and for that service, they deserve to be reasonably compensated. They are most certainly not villains and should not be treated as the enemy. They understand – or should – that serving the public requires sacrifice, that they will – and should – make substantially less in the public sector than if they took their skills to the private sector. Such is the nature of public service. Serving one’s neighbors is, in a sense, it’s own reward. It takes a special person to subordinate, to some degree, his own material desires for the benefit of the community. People not willing to sacrifice ought not be working for the people in the first place.

Nor are public unions doing anything but that which unions traditionally do: trying to maximize their members’ benefits.

Upon those public officials charged with negotiating a compensation package for public employees rests a difficult challenge: balancing the legitimate needs of the employees with the necessity for keeping taxes low.

Having received numerous letters from public employees on the subject of benefits, I am most disappointed in the utter lack of public-spiritedness therein displayed. Not a single letter demonstrates the slightest willingness to compromise. Not a single letter demonstrates the slightest regard for the taxpayers. Not a single letter offers even so much as a hint of an alternative, or even admits that the existing tax burden is already too high. Indeed, these letters demonstrate a level of selfishness completely anathema to the very idea of public service, which requires that public servants put the needs of their constituents above their own needs, or find another job.

It is sincerely to be hoped, then, that rational public sector employees will again come to understand that service to the taxpayers does not include bankrupting them. And that coming to the bargaining table screaming "NO", and offering no constructive alternatives, disserves both the employees and the taxpayers they purport to serve.

Rays of Hope

I’ve spent the last week analyzing the electoral analysis offered by more perspicacious folks than me, and came away with the conclusion that, like most American elections, the lessons from the results of this latest tilt depend upon the perspective of the observer.

Clearly, Iraq played a significant part. But, unlike foreign contests, Americans decide each local election locally. Consider: the balance of power in the Senate probably turned upon the hysterical media reaction to the word "Macaca". Or consider scandals, like that in Montana, which sent a Democrat with an A+ rating from the NRA to the Senate. Or consider further that an almost-as-blue-as-New-Jersey state, Pennsylvania, sent an unapologetic right to lifer to the Senate, but as a Democrat.

Indeed, many Democratic victors represent the absolute reciprocal of the It’s-My-Party-Too types: social conservatives, but economic populists.

Lost among the hullabaloo of the Democratic victory were numerous examples that this remains a very socially conservative country. Anti-gay marriage initiatives – the people apparently lacking the wisdom of the New Jersey Supreme Court – passed overwhelmingly in every state but one in which they appeared. And, in perhaps the most important but the least reported ballot initiative to pass overwhelmingly, the people of Michigan endorsed an anti-affirmative action mandate, which prohibits government from categorizing people by race.

Ward Connerly – perhaps the last of the old-style civil rights activists, who believes that character content, not skin color, matters – in yet another demonstration of the merits of Initiative and Referendum, secured sufficient signatures to place a race neutral question on the ballot. Despite the overwhelming opposition of the elites – who actually believe that we cannot be equal unless were treated differently, based upon our ethnic heritage – the people – who don’t hold much sympathy for race mongers and believe that equal opportunity means just that – passed the measure easily. Now, Michigan will be out of the business of according benefits and burdens based upon skin color and ethnicity.

Unsurprisingly, the people’s support for equality ruffled quite a few academic feathers. One post on a commentary list to which I subscribe, wrote:

"We need a multi-cultural work force for a multicultural society; that means that some skills – speaking another language; knowing another American sub-culture – may be as important as a few points on a standardized test."

Waaallll, now. First, we are NOT a multi-cultural society; muti-ethnic, yes, but multi-cultural, no. Too, it’s simply impossible to assign "culture" based upon skin color or ethnicity, and it’s insulting to try. (I despise corned beef and cabbage, for instance) A family friend married a man from Spain, so their kid is entitled to all manner of Hispanic preferences; why? And, incidentally, is Barak Obama black? Why? He’s the offspring of a white mother. Ditto Halle Berry. Would they be entitled to only half as many preferences as the offspring of two blacks?

The man who wrote the language quoted above is (unsurprisingly) a law professor. Query whether he would accord a preference if the "other language" the candidate spoke was German. Or if the "sub-culture" were Mennonite.

The assertion that only a member of a particular group can serve the members of that group is pernicious and anti-American. And potentially deadly.

Perhaps the reason Northern Ireland proved ungovernable for so many years is that the residents did not see themselves, first and foremost, as Irish with differing backgrounds, but as people with differing backgrounds who happened to live in Ireland. Or consider Iraq. There appears to be no such thing as an Iraqi nation but, rather, Kurds, Sunnis, and Shias, all thrown together in an artificially created "country" without national identity. Their allegiance lies with their group, not with their nation. And the result is civil war.

The "multi-cultural society" the elites propse represents a somewhat more peaceable civil war, with differing factions demanding benefits based upon group identity rather than upon merit.

Instead of celebrating diversity, Americans must celebrate unity. Our strength lies in our shared devotion to common ideals, not in our differing ethnic backgrounds. It’s certainly fine to be interested in from whence your ancestors came, but their point of origin pales to insignificance against the importance of their destination. The emphasis needs to be placed on the word with comes after the hyphen.

Interestingly, the GOP seems to fear this subject, despite the fact that it consistently polls exceptionally well. They fear, perhaps, the wrath of The New York Times. Hence, the silliness of Whitman’s "Many Faces, One Family" programs, which uniformly emphasized the "many faces" while understating the "one family".

The New Jersey Constitution puts in bluntly:

"No person shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil or military right, nor be discriminated against in the exercise of any civil or military right, nor be segregated in the militia or in the public schools, because of religious principles, race, color, ancestry or national origin."

Would that the New Jersey Supreme Court paid as much attention to the language respecting ethnicity, with actually appears in the Constitution, as it does to inventing language respecting gay marriage, which does not.