Follow the lack of money

Recently, on these pages, H. Robert Plausse made the Republican case for tax reform. He rightfully argues that we must begin by curbing spending. His remedy is to amend our constitution to require a two-thirds vote in the Legislature to raise taxes. This might make a good campaign issue, but it will do little or nothing to change the spending patterns of Maine’s governments.

Our constitution already provides that in order for any bill to take effect immediately it must be passed by two thirds.

Absent two thirds, the proposed law doesn’t take effect for three months, and in those three months a petition of citizens can stop the law, until the people themselves vote it up or down. This is not some theoretical curb on the Legislature. When the legislature passed the income tax, the “people’s veto” was exercised and the new tax was arrested until the people themselves approved it.

Solving Maine’s financial problems is more difficult than passing an amendment that legislators will wiggle around. First, legislators must get past narrow party concerns and make hard decisions. For the last two years, Gov. Baldacci and the Democratic Legislature has struggled to get spending under control and they succeeded in slowing the rate of growth. Although many may disagree with some of their choices, the Republican leadership failed to offer constructive counter proposals. Instead they played it for political advantage and offered no plan of their own.

We’re not going to succeed if we elect “my party right or wrong” types.

Even then it will not be easy, because Maine doesn’t just have a spending problem, it also has an “earning problem.”

When politicians say Maine’s taxes are among the highest in the country, this is not a dollar for dollar comparison. By that measure Maine is about average.

The reference is to total taxes compared to total earnings for all our citizens. While it does demonstrate tax burden, it also tells as much about our economy as it does about government spending.

Lawmakers cannot simply cut spending “across the board” if they are going to address Maine’s “earnings problem.” The recent legislature created Maine’s Community Colleges. This opens up higher education to thousands of our people. The goal is to increase earning power which will reduce Maine’s future tax burden, i.e., ratio of taxes to income.

Cutting spending requires hard decisions about what we really need and what we can do without, at all levels of government. Plausse’s critique is of Maine’s total tax burden, including decisions made by local governments.

To hold down spending, my town of Appleton has gone without its own police force, a new town office, and a town manager. Mr. Plausse and the other selectmen in Lincolnville have made different choices. These are local decisions that should be left to local voters to approve, but they all contribute to the numbers Mr. Plausse cites as proof of the problem. In other words he complains about numbers that he helped create.

The problem with simple nostrums like a new constitutional amendment is that they let politicians pretend they are part of the solution, when in fact they may be part of the problem. For example, in his own campaign for the legislature, Mr. Plausse advocates school vouchers.

It’s an idea that appeals to his Republican base, but if enacted will cost the taxpayers millions of dollars. Is this consistent with his insistence “on meeting our commitments to existing programs before adding new programs?”

Mandates that increase costs at a lower level of government are part of the problem. When new and expensive ideas like Maine’s Learning Results or Bush’s No Child Left Behind are proposed,

Republicans and Democrats alike go for them like bees for honey. Fundamental responsibility, not new amendments, are the only remedy for this.

We are a democracy and the solution lies not in taking power away from the majority, and providing for tyranny by the minority, as Plausse advocates, but in the majority taking firmer control, and making difficult decisions.

Voters must reject politicians who offer simple answers to complex problems and reduce every problem to partisan politics.

Barbara Merrill is the Democratic candidate for state House of Representatives District 44 (Hope, Appleton, Lincolnville, Liberty, Islesboro , Morrill and Searsmont).