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8/18/2006 Conservatives Should Think About Being More Conservative By Jack Lohman The column below reflects the views of the author, and these opinions are neither endorsed nor supported by WisOpinion.com. In the recent post of Corey Davison’s review of the nation’s fiscal problems, I agree with 100 percent of his concerns. However, it was what was not said that bothered me the most. Davison, of the conservative Concord Coalition, is absolutely correct when he nails the problem to expenditures rising faster than revenues. Most of us recognize that yearly deficits accumulate to long-term debt, and increases in revenues (taxes) or cuts in services (like Medicare and Social Security) are the solutions most often suggested by conservative think tanks. But what wasn’t discussed is the root cause of these admittedly poor fiscal policies, and that is our moneyed political system. Not discussed, perhaps, because it requires another small taxpayer expenditure to fix correctly. Spending policies don’t just occur out of nowhere; they are bought and paid for by the special interests that benefit from those policies. Roads and bridges to nowhere are not conceived over a beer; they result from proposals by interested industries and are slipped into spending bills by conflicted politicians. We aren’t spending $780 billion on the Medicare drug program over the next decade because some light bulb went off in a congressman’s head; it was pushed through Congress with roughly $50 million in campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry. As well, estate and capital gains tax cuts are not thought up out of the blue; they are bought and paid for by wealthy contributors who abhor our progressive tax system. If improvements in the economy were really the impetus, these tax cuts would have instead gone to low wage earners who would have bought more consumer products for their families and thus stimulated the U.S. economy at ten times the rate claimed by the Bush Administration. Yes, Congress and the president must implement pay-as-you-go rules. But not the ones we have today that pay only the special interests that go to the fundraisers. Neither state nor federal budgets will ever become balanced until we remove the moneyed interests from the campaign funding process, and neither political party is interested in this approach because it would level the playing field for challengers. Look at what Wisconsin’s Republicans have done to quash campaign and ethics reform; it’s not a pretty sight. There are only two types of campaign dollars, public and private. And though a small group of citizens reject spending public money on political campaigns, we already have public funding of campaigns through the back-door taxing system described above. Over $1,300 per taxpayer per year at the state level and over $4,000 at the federal level can be chalked up to taxpayer giveaways to special interests that fund elections. Add to that the billions of dollars that transfer from lower-wage-earners to higher-wage-earners in the form of government policy changes (like NAFTA, GATT, CAFTA and the WTO) and we’re starting to talk about some real money. But all of this need not be. For $5 per taxpayer per year we could break the link between the fat cats and politicians with full public funding of campaigns. And another $10 would cover federal elections. In Arizona’s Clean Election system that $5 doesn’t even come from the taxpayers; it comes from a surcharge on traffic and criminal fines. If you don’t want to contribute to the political system, don’t speed. And if a politician wants to opt out and continue taking private cash, he can; thus the system passes constitutional muster. And to qualify for the public grant a candidate must show public support with signatures, so frivolous candidates are avoided. What’s not to like about a system like that? For the very reasons the public wants public funding of campaigns (fairness), the politicians don’t. It’s the same reason our Republican assembly killed ethics reform and our Democratic governor refused to force a floor vote on it. They like things just as they are, thank you. -- Lohman is a retired business owner from Colgate and founder of www.ThrowTheRascalsOut.org. He can be reached at jlohman@execpc.com. |
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