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Monday, July 16, 2007
State GOP can’t give in to a money grab
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
In vetoing a $142 million tax cut on the 39th day of a 40-day session, Gov. Sonny Perdue said he was reminded of a Chinese proverb: “A man who cannot feed himself has one problem. A man who is full has many.”
Sonny has many. The Georgia General Assembly does, too.
Republicans, in general, have a media problem. They can’t set an agenda. They can’t control the playing field. And with an embarrassment of riches flowing into the state’s coffers, they’ve set themselves up for a big-league fall in the 2008 legislative session. A party that looked to govern Georgia for decades to come is burning its days at both ends. If the Democrats weren’t wrong on message and reduced to living off trial lawyers and Mark Taylor, the GOP would be in more serious trouble than it actually is.
Vetoing the tax cut was a mistake. With record tax collections announced by the Department of Revenue on Friday, the state will end the fiscal year with a surplus of $600 million. For the year, tax collections grew by $1.2 billion. Georgia now has reserves of $1.2 billion, up from $51 million four years ago.
It’s not yet certain that fiscal conservatives are a majority in Georgia. Fiscal conservative talkers are. But taxpayers should shudder at the prospect that excess money, piled to either $600 million or twice that, is on the table in a state lacking in leadership and discipline.
I’m beginning not to trust this crowd any more than the one in Washington to rein in spending. Now, having allowed too much money to accumulate, they have just signaled the money-grabbers who market woe that the cash drawer’s open. It’s near impossible to contain the special interest pleaders when money’s tight. It’s considered cruel and inhumane to deny them when the coffers are flush. Absent a strong agenda and vision, it’s penny-ante to the poorhouse, a nickel and a dime at the time, like every other winner of a lottery scratch-off bonanza.
Republicans can’t do media. Most of them don’t know how. The rest of them are bummed out on it, convinced that it’s a filter filled with bias. They get elected with direct mail, phone banks, TV and grassroots organizations and are convinced they can govern the same way.
So they spend the legislative sessions — and they will again in 2008 — reacting defensively to critics’ charges, which are themselves based on stereotypes. Some dumb bill — Sunday liquor sales, for example — will be crack for critics. Meanwhile, every outstretched hand will come with an indictment-by-stereotype. A failure to hire more bureaucrats or to create new spending programs is evidence of the GOP lacks compassion for the poor, concern for the environment or a commitment to “save Grady.”
The dirty little secret among fiscal conservatives is that this crowd, unaccustomed to power and uncertain about their course, is awfully vulnerable to spending your money to prove that the stereotypes apply to somebody else.
A handful of school districts using taxpayer money to sue state taxpayers for more of their money insists that the $142 million was just what they needed. “Ironically,” said Joseph G. Martin Jr. of Atlanta, “the amount of the proposed refund was almost exactly equal to the continuing ‘austerity cuts’ in the funding of k-12 education long after the end of the recession.” Martin, a former Democratic candidate for state school superintendent, is executive director of the Consortium for Adequate School Funding, a group like many around the country that sue states and hope on activist judges will get them more money.
Expect more lines of outstretched hands from here to Hahira.
Republicans will find themselves in PR disaster they’ve not shown they can handle. Having $600 million in excess collections, and special interest pleaders lined up with their marketing campaigns in tow, should convince legislators of the need to adopt a taxpayer bill of rights that limits new spending to the rate of inflation, plus population growth, a version of which has passed the state Senate.
Georgia needs a vision, leadership and the discipline to manage as fiscal conservatives when the state is flush with cash. It needs a cap on spending.
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Beat me, kick me, vote for me.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The weekend’s tempest among Democratic Presidential candidates was prompted by post-debate remarks John Edwards uttered to Hillary Clinton. “We should try to have a more serious and a smaller group,” the former North Carolina senator said to her.
She agreed. “Our guys should talk,” Clinton replied. The private exchange as they walked off the stage at an NAACP forum in Detroit was picked up by an open microphone. All the Democratic contenders had participated.
The long-shot candidates reacted badly to the suggestion that they should be excluded. And I’m with them. The Republican field dropped by one with the announcement Saturday by former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore that he is abandoning the race. “It has become apparent to me that the combination of my late start, and the front loaded nature of the primary schedule, have made it impractical to continue… I believe that it takes years of preparation to put in place both the political and financial infrastructure to contest what now amounts to a one-day national primary in February.” John McCain may not be far behind.
The point is that the field will shrink well before the first votes are cast. As for the extended debate season, candidates of both parties are providing a valuable service educating the nation on what core constituencies in each party stand for. Edwards certainly would like fewer competitors, upping his chances of gaining traction. But the first votes are still months away. No hurry.
A second question arises from the early rounds of this year-long campaign season. It’s whether candiates should appear before interest groups whose support they have zero chance of winning. Republican Mike Huckabee was the only GOP presidential candidate to accept an invitation to speak to the National Education Association.
That union, the parent of the Georgia Association of Educators, is held under lock-and-key by national Democrats. The same is true of the NAACP. All eight Democratic candidates spoke. Only U.S. Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado appeared, though the rest of the field had been invited.
My rule would be that if a candidate has a specific message to deliver to the organization’s membership, he or she should show up. Otherwise, no. Find another way to reach those voters. Republicans should never accept a single interest group’s leadership, membership or agenda as the filter through which to speak to teachers or other education employees or to blacks. The same applies to Democrats who are invited to appear before groups determined to elect Republicans.
Talk radio and the blogosphere demonstrated during the immigration debate that on critical issues public opinion can form and be conveyed quickly. Organized interest groups are of passing importance — and they often represent not grass-roots opinion, but the views of the few die-hards who control them.
My advice on these two matters: Don’t shrink the debates. And don’t waste time with interest groups that support the opposition and, furthermore, are yesterday’s news.
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