Quotes of the day, tax raises & unfunded mandates
Topics: Theory, Subsidy
05 Jan 1995
From: "DG Ervan Darnell"
The House passed a procedural change to require a 2/3 majority to raise
income taxes in the House. This obviously is not binding on the Senate nor
does it apply to other taxes. I wonder if another simply majority can make
a rules change to allow the margin to be lowered to 1/3 to pass a income tax
increase? Hmmm....
Anyway, some Democrat (I forget which one), attacked it as being profoundly
"unfair, undemocratic, & unconstitutional". Undemocratic? Well, yes, it
is, and good thing too. I strikes at the heart of what is wrong with
democracy: tyranny of the majority. Unfair? That fact that it was not
raised to 101% majority for a tax increase was the only unfair part about
it. Unconstitutional? maybe, but neither here nor there for the moment.
Later in the program Congressman Miller (D, CA) attacked the proposal to
abolish unfunded mandates because it was a sneak attack to undermine the
Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and
Civil Rights. Odd thing, he thought this was a criticism of the proposal.
He had another amusing comment: if Washington could not pass unfunded
mandates on the states, then it would be hard to justify having the state
pass [unfunded] mandates on the counties. Well, yes, imagine that! He
thought this was another argument against, no really! They would have done
better not to have the Republican (governor of Ohio) trying to defend the
measure.
In a separate interview with Governor Roemer (D, CO), he said 'I am all for
civil rights and equal access but we only have so much money. The $50M we
spend on wheelchair ramps for state buildings is money that does not go for
badly needed education.' Well, government education seems to be immune to
improvement no matter how much money is thrown at it, but the essence of his
point is exactly right: utopia is not an option. Yes, it would be nice if
the blind could see, the deaf could hear, the handicapped could walk, and
Republicrats started voting Libertarian, but it just is not going to happen.
In the real world that $100 trip up the wheel chair ramp is a road that does
not get built or a thief that does not get arrested. Those are serious
impositions too. Unfunded mandates are a mechanism to deny that there are
any trade-offs in the real world.
And, as always, prohibiting unfunded mandates does not keep these things
from getting done. It just forces the feds to be honest about it. It makes
no less sense to force someone in Alaska to pay for a ramp in the state
house in Denver than it does to force someone in Colorado Springs to pay for
it.
To really load up the bad reasoning with irony, Congressman Miller said that
stopping unfunded mandates would be a bad thing because it would force
pollution cleanup costs on the nation as a whole instead of the responsible
party and that it was not fair to make unresponsible people pay for such
things! Not only is this a contradiction to his previous position, it is
quite wrong because nothing in the proposal removes liability for criminal
negligance.
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