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Saturday, March 24, 2007
Bipartisanship shines in effort on budget cap
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Amid the cynicism that smothers Washington and the gamesmanship that erupts under the Gold Dome, the occasional nugget surfaces, inspiring hope that this adventure in democracy can work.
As it surfaced last week in the Georgia state Senate, the whole process, revolutionary as it was, took barely seven minutes. As is usually the case, however, the more telling story is the one that preceded it.
For the record, the event was Senate passage of a proposed constitutional amendment, the Taxpayer Protection Amendment of 2007, to cap the growth of state spending. When its sponsor, state Sen. Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock), brought it to the floor on Valentine’s Day, it failed. He asked for reconsideration. When he brought it back last week, it passed 44-6, well above the two-thirds a proposed constitutional amendment requires.
Before the tax-and-spenders leap from tall buildings, feeling their lives doomed by limitations imposed on their favorite exercise — using other people’s money to fund their agendas — compassion compels me to coax them from the ledge. The proposed amendment is not that onerous, nor is it inflexible, nor is it the end of the Era of Big Government. It’s simply a device that informs politicians — and taxpayers — that spending is occurring beyond the rate of inflation and population growth.
The real story here is Chip Rogers’ enormous skill in finding compromise without consenting to poison pills or to neutering language or amendments that move him off target. Sometimes, as clever lawyers and legislators know, changing three or four words can gut a bill or turn it into something entirely different.
Rogers not only compromises when necessary to advance an important idea, but he accommodates in good faith, even to the point of strengthening the opponents’ hand — something State Sen. Tim Golden (D-Valdosta) noted in reflecting on the negotiation that led to passage of Senate Resolution 20. As an example, Rogers’ language specified that when the economy turned down, legislators could spend a sum equal to that appropriated in any of the three prior years. The intent is to keep them from getting boxed in by economic cycles.
That concerned Golden and other Democrats. “We talked about the three prior budget years,” says Golden. “He said, ‘let’s just take any prior year,’ which gave us another level of comfort.” Rogers agreed, too, to another concern of the fiscally conservative Democrats, that excess revenues be pumped into reserves until they reached 10 percent of the prior year’s budget, another protection against downturns. On next year’s $20 billion budget, the reserve would be $2 billion. It’s now 4.26 percent, or about $693.5 million, and can go up to 10 percent, something that a number of influential legislators support, including House Ways and Means Chairman Larry O’Neal (R-Warner Robins). For most of its existence, the reserve fund was considered full at 3 percent, though a governor at his discretion could increase that to 5 percent.
Golden, and other Democrats who include Doug Stoner of Smyrna and George Hooks of Americus, argued, too, that the first priority for excess revenues should be to fund student enrollment growth, a sum that this year amounts to about $167 million. Rogers readily agreed — and he agreed, too, to give the General Assembly power to declare a financial emergency and, after reserves were exhausted, to waive the spending cap.
The good-faith negotiation that led to a bipartisan compromise on an important issue is noteworthy. For one, it demonstrates that the two parties can work together in good conscience on serious matters. And it is the beginning, I believe, of something that’s important to having a competitive two-party political system in Georgia.
Democrats have a serious problem in attracting mainstream white Georgians, a problem worsened by the national party’s continued pull to the left by its antiwar fringe. In June, voters in the 10th Congressional District will elect a successor to the late U.S. Rep. Charlie Norwood. The district stretches from Augusta to Eatonton to the North Carolina line. No known Democrat has a prayer in the district because the party is incapable of pulling more than about a quarter of the white vote in an 85 percent white district.
The way to be competitive is to move into the mainstream while avoiding having some of its shriller liberal voices dominate — and define — the Democratic Party in Georgia.
The effort by Golden, Stoner and Hooks begins that journey.
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