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Tuesday, February 26, 2008
State Republicans shouldn’t gamble with credibility
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Republicans under the Gold Dome who fritter away this opportunity to make a difference, to represent something other than the shopworn grow-government politics they replaced, should have walked in Dorothy Felton’s shoes.
By the Grace of God, she lived to see Sandy Springs created. But for years, until her party gained majority status, she was determined and gracious, always prepared, year after year, disappointment after disappointment, to argue the right of the put-upon residents of Sandy Springs to have a piece of ground they could control, a piece of ground protected from the whims of downtown Democrats who used it as their ATM.
Felton, who died last week at 78, served in the Georgia House for 26 years, always in the minority. Enduring through adversity required conviction, focus, patience and a strong sense of purpose. In that she was not alone. The current session of the General Assembly and the drift of Republicans since they came to power are, to this mind at least, frittering away their inheritance.
Three events of the past week cause me to wonder precisely what this Republican Party stands for.
Event One:
The Georgia Supreme Court unanimously declared that tax dollars the State Constitution mandates to be spent to educate school children cannot be handed over to developers via Tax Allocation Districts. Not for 25 years, not for a day.
The reaction of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle? To declare that the decision “has threatened a critical infrastructure and economic development tool for Georgia, and we must act and develop a solution.”
Tax allocation districts are a conduit for corporate welfare. They have a narrow legitimate purpose —- to entice development to severely blighted areas where the free market wouldn’t go. They should be used sparingly. Instead, they have become abused, with school boards intimidated into going along. Why is it a crisis for Republicans that the Supreme Court has sided with taxpayers?
Event Two:
Cancer Treatment Centers of America wants to build near Atlanta’s airport a $150 million hospital, eventually employing 400, with a projected five-year economic impact of $500 million. It would serve cancer patients expected to fly in from around the Southeast. Few are expected to come from Georgia.
Yet Georgia’s hospitals have ganged up on the General Assembly to keep the competition out. And we have the president of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, George M. Israel III, asserting this to senators:
“We often hear it argued that free market principles should be applied to health care. But unfortunately, health care in the United States does not respond to the free market” because Medicare and Medicaid account for 60 percent to 70 percent of reimbursements.”
The former Republican mayor of Macon, Israel thus dismisses the prospect that competition has value in health care, while his organization fights tooth-and-nail to keep the state from relaxing in the slightest anti-competitive regulations that Ronald Reagan recognized as a failure more than two decades ago. He had the requirement for states to have a “certificate of need” system repealed.
If conservatives believe Israel, they should pack up and go home. And stay there. Next stop, HillaryCare. The bill that the chamber and hospitals are fighting, SB 433, will be on the Senate floor this week.
Event Three:
Up soon, too, is House Speaker Glenn Richardson’s bill to shift part of the homeowner’s property tax load to a sales tax on groceries and services. If there are lower taxes-less government principles here, they elude me. Why conservatives would wish to embrace a tax structure that complicates the code, ups the requirement for regulators and introduces something grow-government advocates tried to push on Democrats —- a tax on services —- is beyond me.
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